Using short, snappy videos to your advantage
TikTok. It’s the widely talked about short-form video sharing platform.
Most think it’s for bright young things, who can dance about and skateboard off high things.
While it’s mostly known for dance-trends and lip-syncing videos, and being as addictive as sugar-water to a manic hummingbird on a hot summer day.
It’s also hugely powerful for business.
IF you know what you’re doing.
Today we’re straying from the SEO path to talk Tik Tok and how you can use this to your advantage.
Tune in to learn:
- Tiktok: What it is, and how it can help your business
- What makes Tiktok unique from other video-sharing platforms
- How secure Tiktok is, and alternatives (eg. Reels)
- How to get started making your first TikTok
- Advice for getting your videos seen
- How product and service-based businesses can appeal to their audiences
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And big thanks to Christopher57r for their lovely review:
“It’s great to listen to a podcast about something technical and not feel completely lost!
Thanks Kate, you make it so much simpler to understand SEO.”
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About Dawn
Dawn works out of her home studio on the beautiful NSW Central Coast, and when she’s not packing orders, teaching classes, or designing subscription boxes, you’ll find her with her audio gear or video gear, connecting with her amazing customers.
Dawn is also a chicken whisperer!
Connect with Dawn
Useful Resources
Transcript
Kate Toon:
TikTok, it’s a widely talked about short-form video sharing platform. It’s also very addictive. Most people think it’s for bright, young things who can dance about and skateboard off high things. But while it’s mostly known for dance trends and lip-syncing videos and being as addictive as sugar water to a manic hummingbird on a hot summer day, it’s also hugely powerful for business, but only if you know what you’re doing. And so today we’re straying again from the SEO path to talk TikTok and how you can use it to your advantage. Hello, my name is Kate Toon and I’m the head chef at the Recipe for SEO success, an online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization and digital marketing. And today I’m talking with a lovely Dawn Lewis. Hello Dawn.
Dawn Lewis:
Hi Kate.
Kate Toon:
Hello. How are you?
Dawn Lewis:
Very well.
Kate Toon:
We’re excited to talk about TikTok today, and I just want to double-check before I start, are your TikToks of you, are they generally used skateboarding off high things or something a little bit different?
Dawn Lewis:
No, I have never skateboarded off a high thing. It’s all craft.
Kate Toon:
Craft, you see, I love that. So we’re going to take a crafty angle today. Let me introduce Dawn to you all first. So Dawn is a professional crafter, a retailer, a podcaster, and a TikToker. She believes that the secret to her business success is harnessing the power of video. Dawn works out of our home studio on the beautiful New South Wales, Central Coast, where I live as well. And when she’s not packing orders, teaching classes or designing subscription boxes, you’ll find her with her audio gear or video gear connecting with her amazing customers. Dawn is also a chicken whisperer. Do you whisper to live chickens or chicken fillets?
Dawn Lewis:
I have, apparently my podcast was very soothing to a customer of mine who had a special needs chicken. And when she’d get very flustered and was in danger of a seizure, my customer would put on one of my podcasts and she would calm right down.
Kate Toon:
Oh my goodness.
Dawn Lewis:
It’s a gift.
Kate Toon:
I didn’t know you could get a special needs chickens.
Dawn Lewis:
Me either, but there you go. Her name was Ophelia.
Kate Toon:
Love that. Well, that’s probably what gave her special names being called Ophelia. I wonder if there’s someone somewhere playing my podcast to a chicken. I think if that happens, I’ll have made it.
Dawn Lewis:
I agree.
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Dawn Lewis:
It’s the pinnacle of success.
Kate Toon:
I really think so. So if you’re listening to the podcast with your chicken, could you please let me know if it’s a special needs chicken as well, then I’m going to send you a special, I love SEO mug. Let me know. I want to be a chicken whisperer as well. And I think chicken whispering would probably go down pretty well on TikTok because it feels like anything goes on TikTok. So let’s start with the basics for those who’ve been living in a hole, what is TikTok?
Dawn Lewis:
TikTok is in a nutshell, a short-form video platform. That’s all it does. Videos are no longer than one minute and there’s yes, skateboarders and breakdancers and puppies and kittens and singers and all that kind of thing. But there’s also a lot of education on there and that’s where I like to niche my videos.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, I’ve lost hours of my life to TikTok. It’s super addictive because the videos show and then the next one pops up straight away. Obviously, you can navigate around it and go and find people and you can search with hashtags and whatever, but it’s the fact that the next video comes and you’re already in it and you can’t stop. Don’t you find?
Dawn Lewis:
It’s the digital equivalent of Pringles.
Kate Toon:
Oh, it is. That is a beautiful way of popping it once you pop…
Dawn Lewis:
There is no bottom of the can.
Kate Toon:
No, it just goes on forever, doesn’t it?
Dawn Lewis:
It really does.
Kate Toon:
This does not make it sound like a business tool, but the other day there was this amazing flow is like men who have beards. And there’s a new filter that you can get that shows you without your beards, the no beard filter. And because with TikTok, you can watch individuals and it’s going to show you more people like that. But also if people have used a particular track or a particular filter or a particular hashtag, you can go down that rabbit hole. So I must’ve watched 50, no beard filter TikToks. And before I know it’s like midnight and I’m like, “What am I doing with my life?” And I think that’s the fear for people. People think that it’s just the daft silly platform. My son is obsessed with it. How can I possibly make it work for my business? So talk to me a little bit about business uses. You mentioned education. Just tell me how you’re using it. What’s working for you.
Dawn Lewis:
Almost all of my videos, my face isn’t even in them, it’s mostly really quick craft tutorials, my business is all-around craft and beautiful card making and stuff. So I show how to use the products that I sell in my store. So there are three billion kinds of ink pad. So sometimes I’ll talk about those. Sometimes I do go face on camera. I have no fear of that at all. I’m on a bit of a show painting like that. But the products are no good to the customers that don’t know what to do with them. And if they don’t know how to use the product, they don’t feel they’re getting their money’s worth from the product. And therefore they’re not going to buy more products. So what I like to do with my channel is educate with quick little tutorials or information, and occasionally a calm voice for the chickens.
Kate Toon:
I was waiting for that. I can see therefore we literally just did. I just recorded an episode with Simone Pavils all around Pinterest, which might come out before yours or after yours. But again, I’ve kind of conceded it’d be really great if you have an eCommerce store or a product because you can demonstrate the product, right? I can see that it’d be useful if you’re a cook or a fashion designer. How do you use it if you’re a service-based business, is it going to be more about showing your face sharing tips and advice?
Dawn Lewis:
Yeah. I follow quite a few service businesses. I follow some doctors. I follow therapists, I follow some social media managers and they just come on with a hot tip. And the beauty of it is you don’t have to get all made up and be fantastic and have a perfectly staged background and put loads and loads of time into it. You can just rock up with a hot tip and use appropriate hashtags and people who are looking for information like social media manager, or how do I learn to do this better? How do I learn more about SEO? They’re going to look for those hashtags and if you’re using them correctly and you can use quite a few, and when you’re putting a hashtag in, it shows you how many views that hashtag gets. Sometimes it’s in the millions. I’ve seen one that’s been in the billions.
Kate Toon:
Wow. Okay.
Dawn Lewis:
It blows my mind.
Kate Toon:
So you can just turn up as a human, record a little video giving it to the camera. I mean, I know that Gary Vaynerchuk was very Pro-TikTok in the beginning and he just seems to search out little snippets from speeches he’s done and stuff on stage as well.
Dawn Lewis:
Gary V is prolific, I follow him on TikTok. He is absolutely prolific on there and it’s just short things. And he often repeats himself over and over because we do need to hear that message over and over sometimes before it sinks in.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. And I mean, they also don’t really have the video. Those snippets of people make don’t really have a beginning, middle and end necessarily they don’t really have a call to action. It literally is just about getting in front of people.
Dawn Lewis:
It is.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. And I guess another thing that can work as well as if you’re a service provider or whatever, is also just sharing a bit of behind the scenes, just sharing some of your life. I think people tend to enjoy that as well. And that’s not necessarily about making a sale or being a thought leader, but it just builds up that kind of trust and that intimacy that you have. Do you think that works as well?
Dawn Lewis:
A hundred percent. People get to know you, it follows the old “know like trust” formula really, really well. And people do feel like they get to know you. I spend a lot of time doing live feeds on my, especially my Facebook page because that’s where a bulk of my people are. And I know them and they know quite a lot about me. Share what you’re willing to share. Obviously you don’t have to overshare and tell people everything you can curate your own shareable moments.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, you can have your boundaries. You don’t need to be having like you in the bath and stuff, unless that’s your thing. I think that might lose me customers, I think rather than gain me them. But it’s the same, like I’ll admit that currently my TikTok I completely turned it over to my dog, Pomplemousse and it’s just videos of my dog Pomplemousse. Cause I was quite a relatively earlier adopter of TikTok and then just got sidetracked with other things. So I like those users who product demonstrations, tips, advice, behind the scenes, snippets of you on podcasts, on stage. And I guess the thing I find about TikTok and with most social media platforms is we often really don’t know what’s going to go viral. What’s going to be a massive hit.
Dawn Lewis:
You never know.
Kate Toon:
No, I mean, any tips around that, anything that you’ve seen that works better than others?
Dawn Lewis:
I’ve seen a lot of people giving tips. The thing that I found most helpful is being really consistent. Now, I’m not always consistent. I hadn’t posted a video for a while, but my life is insane at the best of times. So I just do what I can, where I can, but if say the algorithm seems to reward consistency, but it’s putting something out there that people seem to want to know. For me, it’s colouring videos. My most viral videos had over 260,000 views on it, colouring in a flower.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. People love it because it’s soothing. Yeah, I know. So I made a video. The other thing as well is if you choose obviously with TikTok, you can use other people’s soundtracks as maybe some of these made a funny soundtrack where they’re arguing with their kid. And then you voiced over that, use that as a background for yours, you can use tracks that are popular yet, jump on. As I said, the no beard filter. If you jump on that hashtag when it’s popular, you can work with that. One of my Pomplemousse videos, my dog is called Pomplemousse. I think that’s it pretty well. I can’t remember the guide. It not anything like yours, but I think it got like 5,000 views or something.
Kate Toon:
My son set up an illegal TikTok account and made a video of him just pointing at something and he got half a million views. And then unfortunately TikTok realised that he was under-aged and deleted his accounts. And that was a great life lesson for him and not to build his hopes on a social media platform. I think as with any social media platform, you’ve got to be in it to win it. So you’ve got to be watching what other people… There’s definite trends, isn’t there?
Dawn Lewis:
There are trends and they come and go-
Kate Toon:
So quickly.
Dawn Lewis:
So fast. I’m very slow to pick up on a trend by the time it’s even registered with me, it’s gone. There’s something else new in, I think my most, one of my other most viral videos is because it was one of my very first and I was having trouble pulling a word that I needed. So I used a different word, which wasn’t like it was okay, but not quite right. And people were confused by my accent and confused by my use of the words and the word I was searching for was molecule and I think I used element, but I used element in reference to something else in card making. And people commented like everyone wants to correct you. And the more activity you get in the more interaction there is, the more people get shown your video. So if you do something that just begs for interaction, make a mistake on purpose so people can correct you and then you go in and you interact with people, that’s going to show it to more people.
Kate Toon:
I think with TikTok what I’ve noticed more than ever just as a passive user is how much engagement makes a difference. And there are different engagement options. You can like, you can share, you can follow, you can comment as well. And as you said, and you can encourage comments as well in there. So, it’s an interesting platform. I think obviously what happened as soon as TikTok came along, there was a lot of hoo-ha around countries banning it because I believe it originates in Asia is where is it from?
Dawn Lewis:
China.
Kate Toon:
It’s from China. And we had the whole China, China issue as Donald Trump in present. So there’s lots of countries saying it was banned and people getting very upset about privacy concerns that all seems to have slid away now a little bit. And it’s still here. So what were we up to with the privacy and the security aspects?
Dawn Lewis:
I was actually just looking at it this morning to see what was what. In the US it looks like there’s two us companies, Walmart and someone else who are looking to purchase between them a 20% share, from the Chinese company. It still hasn’t been banned in the US you can still download it. So I think while the talks for some ownership are in play, it probably won’t be banned. We think it was memory says correctly. I think it was banned in India. I think that ban lasted like three days.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. They like to ban things in India and Pakistan.
Dawn Lewis:
India is one of the highest demographic users of TikTok.
Kate Toon:
That’s probably why they banned it. And so what happened around that time that there’s all the talk of bans, there’s obviously Instagram jumped on board and created their version of TikTok, which is Reels. Does Reels pretty much work in the same way? Do you think they are similar products? Or what do you think there?
Dawn Lewis:
It feels different to me because it’s attached to Instagram. If it was its own standalone app, like TikTok, I feel it would have been very similar, but because it’s attached to Instagram it’s got a very different feel to it. For me, Instagram is kind of where you go to put something that’s very curated and styled and that kind of thing. And TikTok is where you get really real stuff. Ironically, I know a lot of people use filters on TikTok, but as far as the information goes in the output, there’s some things are very clever, a lot of effort goes into them. But for the most part, what I see is very real. Instagram feels a little bit more…
Kate Toon:
Artificial.
Dawn Lewis:
A bit more artificial.
Kate Toon:
And I mean, obviously you can also do kind of, it just gets confusing. I think for people between Reels and stories and then Snapchat the stories as well, we’re now getting them, everything’s moving to be, we were talking about this on the Pinterest chat as well that they had now have stories and video pins. And it’s like, you can do the same thing everywhere. Now, Instagram is cracking down on people, just taking their TikTok videos and putting them on Reels and they can see the watermark apparently, and you need to crop that out.
Dawn Lewis:
You film your videos directly into the TikTok app, it’s going to have a watermark on it. I very rarely filmed directly into TikTok. I tend to film just onto my phone, I just film my video, I edit it in InShot and then I upload it to TikTok, so that I can add it there, but then I’ve got the one that doesn’t have a TikTok watermark that I can put on Facebook, that I can put on YouTube, that I can put on Instagram.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, you can use across purpose.
Dawn Lewis:
You’re going to be making things to TikTok that you want to share elsewhere. Don’t film directly into the app.
Kate Toon:
But for those who’ve never made a TikTok before, it’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? You don’t need any extra equipment. It literally all is on your phone. You flip the camera forward or back, you choose your soundtrack, you record and stop recording and stop record lots of little snippets. And obviously people do lots of clever things like making things disappear and appear. And then they do tutorials on how they did that. And I guess the biggest question that people have, you know what I’m going to ask, it’s the biggest question that people have about TikTok and Reels, and it is, do I have to dance and point at things?
Dawn Lewis:
No. I have not once in the 13, 14 months I’ve been on TikTok, danced or pointed at anything that wasn’t a physical product that I was holding in my hand.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, the thing I find super awkward, correct me if I’m wrong, on TikTok the video starts straight away with the audio. It all makes sense as good. On Reels often, I don’t get the… When they’re coming up in my feed, if people have put that Reel up and then they’re sharing it in their stories as well, it comes up with no audio. The audio isn’t there straight away. So what I’m seeing is someone, maybe it’s my phone. Maybe I’ve just got the sound I’ve ever seen people dance around and point at something. It is the most excruciating experience.
Dawn Lewis:
I get that as well. I think because I tend to not have the sound on for Instagram. So what I do is if I’m about to go into stories and I want to watch, start watching something with audio, I’ll scroll down my feed until I see a video ad or someone else’s video and I’ll tap it so the sound comes on and then that’ll activate the sound in Reels and stories as well. My workaround.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, totally. But I think that’s the awkwardness of it is that a lot of those videos where you’re dancing are being consumed without the audio and that… When the music comes on, it makes more sense. So that it doesn’t feel so awkward. But yeah, I don’t get it. I don’t know why people dance. And I guess one of the things that people will worry about with TikTok and with Reels to a degree is that they get to in somehow detract from their professionalism and their businessyness by being on this slightly more playful city, social media platform. I know that’s a resistance like this for kids. It’s not for me. What are your thoughts on…?
Dawn Lewis:
Well, that’s interesting that people go it’s for kids and yes, young people are the higher, the highest demographic existing on there. However, the highest growth fastest-growing demographic is gen X. We are all over there. The kids are going to have to find somewhere new soon because gen X are all up in there. You’ve got 50-year-olds with a whole lot of life experience sharing a lot of stuff. And there’s, I follow a specialist menopause doctor from the UK and you think, Oh, well, she’ll be hurting her credibility. Quite the country. She gets spots on TV shows and she’s filming a whole bunch of educational content for the UK medical system now. Because she gets on there and constantly shares great information. Cause she knows that her demographic is on there and growing.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, I’ve noticed that the shift as well. In terms of the older generations getting on there and also experimenting and playing with it. I don’t think this is it. There’s always a bright new thing. And I think that people listening to this, especially if they’ve heard the Pinterest one, we’ve got YouTube, we’ve got Clubhouse now. It’s overwhelming. And my advice if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about it is I don’t really think that most small business owners can be everywhere. And I really think you’d need to go all in on a couple of platforms and give it a good whack of the stick. Do you know what I mean? Facebook is big for me. That’s where my communities are, Twitter I dabble with. Instagram I can’t really be bothered. I should try harder at LinkedIn.
Kate Toon:
But if I were to go with TikTok, I would be saying to myself, “I’m going all in for three months on this.” So let’s lay that out. And we talked about the, making the videos. If I were to start tomorrow and I was like, “Right, I’m going to do this.” What would your strategy be for like a three-month plan? How would you approach it? Would you have content pillars? Would you have a frequency you recommend?
Dawn Lewis:
When I started, I went very much all in and I spent a period of time where I’d put up a video every single day. And I did that for easily about six to eight weeks. Because I wanted to see, were people going to watch them, were people going to be interested in them. The other part of it is, I know it can be a tremendous time-waster and I personally spend at least one hour on TikTok a day. I like it. It’s a dopamine hit for me. My brain is just like, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme it sets me up for a good day.
Dawn Lewis:
You have to consume the content, you have to know your way around the platform and keep an eye on the trends and see what other people doing, what plays well, what gets good views? Because if you aren’t familiar with the way that people talk, if you’re not familiar with trends that come and go and how quickly they come and go, what’s acceptable, what’s not, where the trolls lie, how to dissuade them. You have to be a consumer to be an effective creator.
Kate Toon:
I love that you have to be a consumer to be an effective creator. I really do.
Dawn Lewis:
Really do.
Kate Toon:
I agree with that. Little random question. A lot of people recommend doing FYP, for you feed, that you use that hashtag in your hashtags. Do you really think that makes any difference? I don’t.
Dawn Lewis:
I really don’t think it does. I mean, when in January, when Bridgerton was the big thing, everyone was using the hashtag at Bridgerton in their videos, even if it had nothing to do with Bridgerton. That used to bug me so much. It’s like right now there’s some sour patch, creative fund chat. There’s weird things that I look and I’m like, this doesn’t have anything to do with sour patch. Why are you using that hashtag? That bothers me from however my brain works because I like my hashtags to be relevant so that the person who searched it going to find what they look for. I don’t want to be deceptive with my hashtags, but I don’t think if they actually work.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. Okay. Now of course, we’re, this is an SEO podcast, TikTok is a search engine, just like Pinterest, just like YouTube, just like Google. In terms of the algorithm, we’ve talked about how you can use the music and different hashtags and to kind of jump on trends and kind of get ahead in the algorithm. Other things that it affects kind of your ability to be shown, I guess, would be shares, watches, likes. Which ones do you think has the biggest impact, subscribes? What do you think is the biggest thing that was going to boost you the most?
Dawn Lewis:
I honestly think it’s interaction. If people comment, that’s the thing that’s going to put you in front of more people and the more people you’re in front of, the chances of people actually following you, subscribing to you, are much higher. So giving people content that they can interact with, is going to get you more followers. I think I’ve been on for just over a year and I’m exceeded 10,000, which isn’t bad.
Kate Toon:
I’m going to check what mine is. I’m going to check what Pomp-
Dawn Lewis:
To be, really viral, like kind of. And when I say viral, viral for me, like over 2000 views. Viral for other people is millions and millions of views, but I’m not trying to get in front of millions of people in front of my people.
Kate Toon:
Do you want to know how pompletheflomple is doing?
Dawn Lewis:
Yes please.
Kate Toon:
I got 133 followers. No 118 followers and 713 likes. My most popular video you are going to be impressed with this 4,133.
Dawn Lewis:
Ooh, very nice.
Kate Toon:
Pretty good. No, it’s not really. But that was back in March 2020, I made my last video. So I’m kind of one of these people, who’s an early adopter and then get sick of things and I hope that won’t be the same with Clubhouse as well. But, you’re making me think I might take a second look. But as I said, if you had that three months strategy, do you think three months is enough time to see whether it’s going to work for you or not? Do you think that’s…?
Dawn Lewis:
It tends to give very immediate returns. It’s just such a fast-moving app. I mean, you tell it what you like and you don’t like within 30 minutes of turning it on for the first time, it’s showing you stuff that you like more than what you don’t. So it’s super intuitive I would be concentrating here on content that gives you good interaction, but also practise grabbing people’s attention within two seconds because people will swipe.
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Dawn Lewis:
They go so quickly and if in the time it takes to do this, run your finger up the screen, come around for another pass. You really have to get people’s attention either with what you put in your description or text that goes over the top of your video or what you’re saying. If I scroll to a video that starts with, “What’s up guys.” I’m out of there. I’m just out of there so fast. It’s the fastest exit strategy ever.
Kate Toon:
What I’ve seen as well. What gets me in, cause I’d say I’m more of a consumer than a creator is the video where it shows the start of a story. And because they don’t – So say it’s like a one-minute video showing, “I set this amazing thing up for my grandma for her birthday.” And you get partway through the story. Now they don’t show the next part, the story in the feed, it will go to someone at a completely different video. So what I have to do is swipe back, click on the person’s profile, go to their feed and try and find… Well that video might have been posted six months ago, two months ago. So I have to go through their feed and find part two and that’s real engagement. So that works quite well as well.
Dawn Lewis:
It really is. They brought in a new feature, a little while ago when you’re doing that, when you searching for that part two, as you’re scrolling through someone’s grid, it’ll actually, the box will be kind of blacked out and it’ll show you the one you looked at.
Kate Toon:
Oh, that’s clever that…
Dawn Lewis:
I was so happy when they brought that in because it means I can scroll till I find that blacked out box. And then I know that part two is going to be.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, that’s very smart though. I think that’s super clever.
Dawn Lewis:
That was a smart move.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I just think it’s a fun platform. And I think I’ve seen people adopting Reels, obviously, because now they’re on Instagram, they’re already on Instagram. They already have that platform and I’ve seen some business owners do a relatively good job of that. They’re not dancing necessarily, but they are either talking to camera or they’re… The other thing is the awkward grin towards the camera while text appears up, I think you really have to debate how awkward it is. You need someone that’s willing to turn around and tell you that you look stupid. And thankfully I have an 11 year old and he’s, for some reason, he’s really willing to tell me how stupid I am quite a lot.
Dawn Lewis:
Look it’s a gift that teenagers have and I applaud their willingness to share it with their parents.
Kate Toon:
But the other good thing is my son sends me TikToks and a few clearly it’s working like he’s really interested in stocks and shares at the moment and Bitcoin. And so he’s sending me all these tips about Bitcoin and stocks and shares, and I’d also advertise as you can advertise on TikTok as well, right? So he found this little card that’s called a spriggy card, which is like a bank card. He found that through TikTok, he sent it to me, we signed up. So again, if you are trying to reach a younger demographic, I mean, it’s the place to be. And I think even if you’re there being an awkward dad dancing at your kid’s disco, I think it’s better to be there being the awkward dad than not be there at all. I’m not sure.
Dawn Lewis:
It is. My daughter showed it to me, my 19-year-old. So I guess she was 18 when she showed it to me because she talked about it endlessly. And eventually I’m like, “Just show me, show me.” Because every sentence was, “on TikTok”, just show it to me. She swiped through three videos and I went, this is a fantastic marketing tool. Why aren’t other craft businesses using this? So in my industry, I was a very early adopter. None of the craft celebrities were on there at all. These are the craft celebrities on my wall behind me. And now they are. And so this one in particular, he’s young, he’s 18. He has his own brand in our industry. It’s the place for him to be.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. So I think we’ve persuaded people. I’ve got a couple of questions here from members of the Digital Master Chefs Community, that’s my private member group. We’ve covered off Gavin’s he answered a little bit about security flaws. The next one I have is from Anja Letz and she has a business called Immeryours Keepsake Jewellery & Art. And she says, this is more to Reels, but I think it would apply to a TikTok as well. “I love Reels and I’ve been using it actively, but I wonder if we need to include hashtags in Reels or not.” Do people search for hashtags content on Reels?
Dawn Lewis:
I would say yes to hashtags on Reels because it’s integrated with Instagram. If you’re searching hashtag personal necklace, it’s going to show you static images, but it’s also going to bring up Reels. So why wouldn’t you-
Kate Toon:
Well, it used to bring up stories as well. I get so confused between stories, Reels, and feeds.
Dawn Lewis:
Yeah, I think it could. I mean, it could bring up stories as well. I’ve not tried it.
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Dawn Lewis:
It’s been a while since I searched anything on Instagram.
Kate Toon:
And you can put reels into your stories, can’t you?
Dawn Lewis:
Yes, you can put Reels into your stories.
Kate Toon:
God, it’s exhausting. And then
Dawn Lewis:
It is.
Kate Toon:
And then on IGTV, like that’s different again.
Dawn Lewis:
Yeah. So when I do go live on Instagram, because I’m a product based business I don’t make my own product, I import and sell. I do unboxings. People love an unboxing. If you’re a product based business, do unboxings, people love them. It goes live on stories. It stays there for 24 hours and it’s gone. But when I’m done, I shift it to IGTV.
Kate Toon:
And you can also a little snippet of it to your feed as well. Overwhelming. Sally Westra from the Digital Master Chefs Group asks, “what are the best ways product businesses can use Reels and TikTok to generate sales?” I mean, I think we’ve covered a few of them, but any final tips there? Unboxings?
Dawn Lewis:
If you are a retailer, then unboxings, people love because if they can’t come in store, especially over the last 12 months, That’s been a really big thing. They can’t come in store. If you’re a… I’m just seeing your beautiful flowers. If you’re a florist show what flowers came in today. Show putting an arrangement together, show things behind the scenes. What does it look like in that walk-in fridge? If you are a maker, then you can try all sorts of cool stuff. You can show your stash or your yarn or your beads, show how you do this or do that. You can choose how much and how little you want to give away. If you’re making process, packing orders. See a lot of-
Kate Toon:
People love that, don’t they?
Dawn Lewis:
Packing an order today. And people like, “Oh, that’s my order.”
Kate Toon:
Yeah. But also they’re seeing that you are a small business, they’re seeing your kitchen table where you’re packing the staff and people like buying from local businesses. They like feeling they’re connected. I think there’s a brand that I like Jubly-Umph. She makes enamel pins and she’s…
Dawn Lewis:
I’ve met her.
Kate Toon:
Me too. She came to one of my events. She’s a cool chick. And she shows the design process of before she makes the pin, she shows them arriving. She does nice voiceovers over them as well. I’ve got a great friend as well, Tyson who does really good arts. He shows his art journey, but he’s not professing to be the best artist, but he’s talking about, he does a great voice over, over the top of these drawings that he does and he’s getting better and better.
Kate Toon:
So people are seeing him evolve. I think it’s involving people in your story, having a bit of fun with it. If you want to dance, dance. I’m not going to dance, but if you want to dance, dance, and that feels right to you, then do that. I think it’s a fun place to be a bit playful with your business. Because again, it is there. The content is evergreen on your wall, but it does slip away quite quickly. So it’s not like LinkedIn. Do you know what I mean? It’s not like where everyone people expect TikTok to be a bit playful and they’re happy.
Dawn Lewis:
Yeah, people are there for fun. I call it the three Es of TikTok. People go for entertainment and they go for education and they go for emotion. They’re the three things you will find on TikTok that are just, it’s a very real place. And people have very real skills.
Kate Toon:
Oh, the people tell deep stories. My partner is, one of the only things that makes him cry is when he goes on TikTok and it’s like a dog, it’s been rescued or anyway.
Dawn Lewis:
Found this cat in the middle of the road.
Kate Toon:
So I know what happens to the cat. And it’s amazing how much of a story you can tell in 60 seconds with little snippets it’s that unbelievable.
Dawn Lewis:
It really is. And being on TikTok and doing these short form videos, and now YouTube has Shorts, which is rolling out. It’s still in beta, but you can hashtag Shorts. If you can’t get across what you do very quickly, these days, you’re losing people.
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Dawn Lewis:
Good practice for your elevator pitch.
Kate Toon:
It really, it is used to the art of writing a tweet used to be, and it was 140 characters. It was a real art to that. And there’s an art to making a video, and again it talks about product. Being able to see someone handling a product and get an idea of the scale and how it looks in real life, in different lights. That’s really important, as you said. And I think as you said, from business owners, it’s just sharing little tips and snippets and that you can edit them and create them off the platform and upload them. But as you said, I know people who spend a good hour and a half making a single Reel or a single TikTok video to just get it right. To do effects, to get them. It can be very time consuming. So as with everything in digital marketing, you’ve got to think about your ROI and whether you’re reaching your right customers and how much input you’re gonna put into that. It’s like everything. There’s so many things you can choose to do now, so many platforms.
Dawn Lewis:
And you kind of have to be where your customers are. So in my first three months where I was, is this going to be worth my while? I had people make purchases and say, I saw you on TikTok. So for me, I know that my people are there.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. It’s like with me with Clubhouse, a lot of people are skeptical about Clubhouse, but for me, I’ve had people saying, I found you via clubhouse. And I’d never heard of you before. And I think this is it. If there’s one thing you take from this episode, it may not be that TikTok is the right thing for you, or Reels is the right thing for you. But if you are on a platform where you’d be marketing consistently for a while, you’re probably reaching the same people again, and again, and again. You’re remarketing to the same people because there’s a half-life of how Facebook and Instagram works. It’s hard to really strike out into a new audience, a new demographic, a new country, I think TikTok and Clubhouse and Reels really kind of, they give you access to a whole new world of people that you would never might’ve had before. And who’s to say that a young millennial might not want to be a crafter. Everyone’s seen, we make these judgements about young people, but you know.
Dawn Lewis:
Millennials are in their thirties now they’re in art and craft.
Kate Toon:
They are true. I forget. I’m just so old.
Dawn Lewis:
There’s a millennial fellow on TikTok who head bangs to heavy metal music while crocheting really cute toys.
Kate Toon:
Oh my God. I want to follow him. You’ll have to include a link to him in the show notes.
Dawn Lewis:
I’ll find it for you, yeah.
Kate Toon:
Dawn That was amazing. If we want to find you on TikTok, how do we find you?
Dawn Lewis:
My handle pretty much everywhere is Dawn Lewis Imagery. So that’s where my very sparse Reels are. Cause I’m used to one minute videos. Reels is only 30 seconds, so I’m still yet –
Kate Toon:
Ah, okay, there you go. So we can find you at Dawn Lewis imagery on TikTok, on Instagram. Your website is Dawn Lewis imagery as well. Is that right?
Dawn Lewis:
It’s dawnlewis.com.au.
Kate Toon:
Dawnlewis.com.au. I’ll include links to all of these things in the show notes. One quick question I forgot to ask before we finish. You can’t at the moment, schedule content into Reels or TikTok, Can you? You just have to put it up as it comes. You can’t plan ahead?
Dawn Lewis:
Pretty much. You can put TikTok’s videos in draft.
Kate Toon:
Right.
Dawn Lewis:
And then they can sit there until you just want to send them live, but there’s not a scheduling tool for that quite yet.
Kate Toon:
I like that the immediacy as well. And I think that also lends to the fact that with a lot of these platforms, now you get better engagement if you’re actually on the platform doing the thing. So, you know yeah.
Dawn Lewis:
Yes. And you can go live on TikTok as well if you’ve got a thousand followers.
Kate Toon:
Wow. Okay. There we go. All these little snippets coming at the end Dawn. That was amazing. Maybe I will. I’ve set up Pomple the Flomple. Can you only have one account per phone number?
Dawn Lewis:
No.
Kate Toon:
Oh my goodness. So I can go and create a new account?
Dawn Lewis:
I have two accounts. So to have two accounts, I think you need to link it to a different email address.
Kate Toon:
Okay.
Dawn Lewis:
But it can stay with the same phone number. And when you go into your, whatever the tab is, so you look at your own account over on the right up the top. You can tap on your account name at the top and you can switch between accounts. So I have two, I have one for voiceover stuff. I thought during COVID that my business would tank and I would need secondary things. So I started doing some voiceover work with my super calm voice. And turns out everyone was crafting in lockdown so I didn’t really need that.
Kate Toon:
I’m going to get you to show me how to do that afterwards and I’m going to set up my account. Dawn, that was amazing. Thank you. Great to kind of have an unlikely TikToker, I thought at first to come on and talk about it, but clearly not, clearly, it’s working fabulously for your business. I’m so grateful for you sharing that insight today. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Dawn Lewis:
Oh, thank you for letting me talk about TikTok for a really long time.
Kate Toon:
So there you go. Another podcast about another social media platform. Oh, I don’t know if I can take many more. That’s the end of this week’s show. And if you have questions about TikTok for business or Reels, head to my I love SEO group on Facebook. Dawn is a member. I’m sure she’d be happy to answer your questions. As you know I end the show with a shout out to one of my lovely listeners, and today it’s Christopher57r and he writes, “It’s great to listen to a podcast about something technical and not feel completely lost. Thanks Kate. You make it so much simpler to understand SEO.” Well, we’ve done a few non SEO episodes recently, so I hope you’ll forgive me for that. I think that we need to understand that SEO is holistic. All of these things, maybe you’ve found someone on TikTok and you love them, what are you going to do next? What if you want to find more? You may maybe going to go to their profile or maybe you’re just going to pop their name into Google and try and find their website.
Kate Toon:
So all these things help build your brands and build that branded search as well. So it’s kind of related, or maybe I’m just justifying my interest in other things. Anyway, if you enjoyed the show, please feel free to leave a five-star rating and review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you heard the podcast. You can also head to the Recipe for SEO Success for a full transcript of this podcast. Learn more about Dawn, find my TikTok. Maybe I’ll have set up my new TikTok account by the time you listened to this, also don’t forget to listen to my new podcast. The Kate Toon show it’s coming out with series three very soon. It’s about my life living as a misfit entrepreneur, my business tips and advice on how to have a happier, more successful business life. Tune in on your favourite podcast app. Okay, until next time happy SEOing.
