How Does TikTok Fit in with Running An Agency

Let’s start with the example of Steven Hena. He and his brother, during school days, decided to open a TikTok account and make some funny videos, recording some pranks. Two such videos went viral. One was a prank he did on his brother that got 7.5 million views, and the other got 7.1 million.

However, once he started posting more videos, the viewership started shrinking after initially going up.

He made close to 40 TikToks. Two were really big hits, three had maybe 40,000 views, and the last one only got 19 likes. So, there’s a high variation. Hits were only 5%, the remaining 95% didn’t go anywhere.

So what does this mean?

Keep Posting on TikTok – Don’t Be Discouraged

This is similar to the early days of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or YouTube. For example, in 2007, I made one of the first apps on Facebook, and it went to 5 million installs. Anytime a network opens up like this, you will have this high dynamic range similar to Steven’s.

But, don’t be discouraged if your first 10 or 20 items don’t take off. You just got to keep going, and you’ll find that one of them, like Steven, found his theme of pranking his brother, will be a hit. So Steven could probably think of five or six other things on the same theme, like waking up his brother when he’s sleeping or pinching him.

And if you’re a business owner, a professional,  a consultant, or selling coaching, you could combine themes to make it interesting to the younger group while also implementing marketing strategies.

TikTok for Digital Marketing

However, just because you see someone doing pranks or singing, or a pretty girl doing some dance move, you don’t have to do that. That’s the whole thing that people get hung up on TikTok.

They think TikTok is not for them because they’re professionals just sharing advice and not young adults to be doing prank videos, singing, and dancing, or an athlete who’s doing this amazing slam dunk that everyone wants to see.

I don’t have as many followers as Steven, but at the Seven Figure Agency conference with Josh Nelson in Miami, I featured him on how to be a seven-figure agency. I interviewed him and tagged him. So, I’m getting these ticks.

I got tons and tons of these one-minute tips that I share. Or, I’ll be in a different place, like I was in Kosovo a couple of weeks ago talking about our book with my buddy Perez Hilton, who’s a celebrity blogger with 40 million followers. I had him talk about our book, and here’s what he says:

So notice that things that are really popular are not just professional podcasting, office kind of thing. Just like opening the door, doing a prank, or walking-and-talking videos work really well.

And you’ll see that though a little bit douchy, it works. I’m getting out of a Mercedes AMG or something and talking about how to make a one-minute video while I’m doing a one-minute video.

So you can see I’m walking past these other Ferrari and Lamborghini.

I’m still giving the same advice but doing it in an interesting visual manner.

So what can you do to be interesting? Maybe it’s with someone who’s well known, maybe it’s walking and talking outside in your backyard. It’s ideal if you can involve a prop. So if you’re a real estate agent, the prop’s the house. If you’re a chiropractor, it’s the table.  Visually show yourself doing the thing rather than just talking about it. That’s the difference on TikTok.

Now Steven has done it as a consumer, but there’s not really any value, right? Maybe if you get enough followers, you can get a sponsorship and sell things for Home Depot because you’re showing kitchens and things like that.

But let’s be honest. That doesn’t really create value, but what it does do is let us look at the analytics. It shows that Steven knows how to use TikTok. And you would trust him to do your marketing on TikTok rather than a marketer who is not into TikTok. And he’s a young adult. In fact, even if you didn’t know he had 3 million likes on TikTok, you’re gonna trust a young adult.

So you’re not trying to create millions of views for the sake of doing it. That’s just vanity, like having a blue check mark. I built multiple blue check marks on these other networks. And I have a lot of followers.

What’s a LIGHTHOUSE

It’s someone with high authority. They’re respected. So if you want to reach real estate agents, you can say, “Hey, I can do services for real estate agents.” But when you have the person your ideal customers respect, that’s your LIGHTHOUSE.

For example, Tom Ferry is the guy who’s got 450,000 real estate agents. So I have content created with that LIGHTHOUSE. So, it’s inception because whoever the people are that you’re trying to get to buy from you,  then who is it that they respect? So if they all follow Russell Brunson, then I’m going to create content with Russell Brunson.

So what are you going to do if you haven’t done this already? Don’t think you have to be famous or have to have this huge network.

You’ll see that I’m literally making short little videos with other people that are figureheads. So I made this one yesterday with Josh Nelson honoring him, and he gave a tip. What am I gonna do with this tip? Let’s see

You can see that I’m relying not on my expertise but on someone else’s expertise.

There’s a hidden thing that most people don’t talk about in particular. TikTok does image recognition. So they’re gonna recognize Josh Nelson. So if I put a video out there that has Josh Nelson, even if I don’t tag Josh Nelson, TikTok will put it on the ‘For You’ page and all that. The reason why TikTok’s grown so fast is that they have learned how to do these things.

I could take with Dylan Collins, who has many millions of followers, and talk about his PR services. And I know that literally, by having a video with his face on Facebook, it will pick up on this too.

They will pick up and start to show Dylan Collins with the cash in our TikTok book.

I’m can take videos with Matthew Januszek and promote this to the fitness industry because he is a LIGHTHOUSE in that industry.

So, think about how you can co-create content with other people that are well known.

You can make 15-second videos –  “Did you know the one way to do ——? No, what is it? You do this, and here’s my tip. Contact me. And let’s schedule a 15-minute call to talk about it.”

But I want you to start thinking about how you can co-create content. Do you have a LIGHTHOUSE in mind? If you stay creative and try lots of angles, you never know what might resonate.

TikTok Posting Strategy

TikTok has an algorithm. So once one of your videos is a hit, just keep posting repeatedly. For example, Steven stopped after the second post, and that brought down his viewership and followers. So as soon as the first video hits, just keep constantly posting, and you’ll get really close to the same results as your first video got.

On Twitter, we have literally taken the same post without even changing it around and just reposted it like 50 times. Jack Links, their Beef Jerky, we have a hundred posts on Twitter and just recycles.

Once it hits the bottom of that list, it goes back to the top, and it just retweets the same thing. So with TikTok, you can do the same. You can recycle it.

So why is that not a problem to repost? For example, say, Las Vegas and gambling – you just won a hand at blackjack, and you could instantly double your wins.

You put in 10 bucks, and you got back 50. Wouldn’t you want to play that over and over and over again? For some reason, people, maybe from the world of SEO, believe that once you’ve made a blog post, you don’t want to post the same blog again because that’s like duplicate content, and Google’s gonna penalize you.

But social media is semi-permanent. Has anyone ever looked at what you’ve put on TikTok a year ago or what you put on Facebook from a year ago? Forget about it. And YouTube, you’re not going to post the same video again because it’s there, and it grows power over time.

But when you have ephemeral networks that only last for a short duration – like TikTok posts, absolutely repost if you’re just lazy or you have a VA where you just don’t want to do the extra effort. But if you’re willing to do the extra effort, learn from your greatest hits and make versions of them.

Also, try to catch the viewer’s attention within the first two to five seconds because young teenagers’ attention span is super low. So, within the first five seconds, you should have the viewer’s attention.

Also, check out this book on Amazon: The Definitive Guide to TikTok Advertising