Hey, everybody.
Welcome to our first video of our TikTok marketing
micro course.
My name is Tyler King.
I'll be your instructor for this module.
And I'm really excited to work with you
and share with you
about the wonderful world of social media.
A little bit about me.
I've been doing social media marketing now,
man, for almost about 15 years or so.
Worked with a wide variety of organizations,
from multi-billion dollar corporations to startups
to SaaS companies to consulting,
and now I'm currently the senior social media
and community manager for PandaDoc,
which is an online document management software company.
Now, that probably sounds not that exciting,
but give me some time and I'll pitch you
about some of the great things
that we're doing on social media,
and more specifically about TikTok.
Now, a little disclaimer, if you will.
Now, at the time of the making of these videos,
this is kind of the most accurate information
and up-to-date stats that we have.
But if you've been in social media long
or just starting out,
you'll quickly find that social media is ever-changing.
And so that's one of the most important things to remember,
is to always keep your ear to the ground,
keep up to date on the social media marketing influencers,
and you'll be able to stay in the know
of all these changes that seem like happen weekly,
and it gets a little bit crazy, but that's all right.
Okay! (claps)
In this module, we're gonna be going over
some of the history, some stats,
some best practices about TikTok,
and then that will lead us into
more of specific types of content.
In video two, and then in video three,
we're gonna be talking about some use cases and examples.
And then, in the fourth video,
we're gonna be going over the exercise that you all can do.
Spoiler alert,
you're gonna be making your very own TikTok videos.
But don't worry, we'll walk you through it.
We're not looking for perfection or anything like that.
But without further ado, let's get this wagon train moving.
Okay, here we go.
We're gonna talk a little bit more about,
what's the deal with TikTok?
And just to back up just one extra step,
really wanna talk about kind of the rise of vertical video.
Gosh, in the last few years, we've seen Instagram and TikTok
and YouTube, and even LinkedIn and Twitter
really start to experiment with these vertical videos,
and I think there's a few reasons for that.
Number one, vertical videos are very mobile-friendly.
And as we've seen over the last few years,
people's use of accessing social on their phones
has only gone up, especially after the pandemic.
And so that ease of use and that ease of creation
is one of the reasons why these vertical platforms
have really taken off.
And one of the things that's interesting to me
is that this use of stories
has taken off across all social platforms.
Even on Facebook, you know,
62% of users have used Facebook Stories.
And that might be something that you say to yourself,
"Facebook? Who still uses Facebook?"
A solid amount of people, especially internationally,
still use Facebook.
So that's why always it's important to
never just write off a social media platform,
even though you personally may not use it.
There's a few more stats to remember about vertical video.
I think this one's really important.
You know, 57% of user-generated videos
are shot with mobile devices, aka influencer-created videos.
And that's what you really wanna see.
Also, 90% of vertical videos
have a higher watch completion rate
compared to horizontal ones.
That's really important
because, at the end of each video,
you wanna have a nice clear call to action,
especially if you're working with YouTube Shorts.
So these are all important to remember.
They're gonna be constantly changing.
But long story short, vertical video is here to stay,
TikTok at the forefront of that.
So let's talk about TikTok specifically.
Where did it come from?
Why is it here? And why is it so popular?
So these slides are gonna be a little more content dense,
but don't worry, you'll have access to the slides.
You'll be able to go back through these
at a little bit of a slower pace.
But I wanna hit some of the main things here.
So this is something that was developed
over in China by a company called ByteDance.
And it was launched in September 2016
for a Chinese audience.
In '17, we saw that expansion.
And then it eventually merged
and became what TikTok is today.
Now, one of the things that really accelerated
its popularity is the COVID-19 pandemic.
When so many people were stuck inside
people turned to social media,
and they turned to TikTok dances
and trends and things of that nature,
and that's one of the main reasons
why we saw this skyrocketing use of TikTok.
Now, again, at the creation of this module,
there is quite a bit of pushback to TikTok.
There have been several states here in the United States
that have banned it on government devices.
So that's something to keep an eye on.
I know at PandaDoc, that's one thing
that we are always trying to weigh the pros and cons.
Do we use TikTok?
Should we just go more in on Instagram Reels
and on YouTube Shorts?
But until things take a drastic turn,
we still feel like TikTok is a valuable place
to connect with our audience.
And here's what's really interesting
is just the dramatic increase in overall monthly users.
They just clocked out over one billion users.
And what's really interesting is average minutes per user.
TikTok users love the app.
They spend an average of about 95 minutes per day.
We'll get into a little bit more about the algorithm,
but the TikTok algorithm
is probably the best social media algorithm in use today.
You like something, you watch something,
the algorithm picks up on it, and it finds other content,
and it's kind of scary
just how much it gets into your brain.
One really cool thing to know
is, again, this is time spent on social media apps.
So comparing TikTok to the others,
TikTok blows away the competition.
27.3 hours just in the UK as of February 2022.
So what does this mean for marketers?
People are spending lots of time on there,
so it makes a lot of sense to sort to figure out
if this is the right channel for your app to be on.
Now, one thing that's important to remember
when it comes to any social media channel
is just because it's there doesn't mean it's for you.
Do your research,
both from an SEO and from a social media perspective.
And also, one of the most important places
to do your research is to talk to your audience.
Ask them, where are they at?
Where do they wanna learn?
What do they wanna learn?
So never ever forget to talk to your audience.
Because you may find that they're on TikTok
or you may find that they're on Facebook.
So always ask your audience.
Okay, moving on to this rise of TikTok.
You know, we're seeing more and more
of the short-form dominance in that 15 to 16-second longs.
One of the things that really made TikTok take off
were the viral challenges and trends.
You know, TikTok's algorithm-driven "For You" page
has propelled viral challenges, dances,
and trends to the forefront of social media culture.
I mean, you had something take off on Facebook,
like the Harlem Shake.
If you haven't heard about that, Google it.
And now we're seeing that kind of content all the time.
It's also birthed a new generation of influencers.
Regular people from beauty to sports to you name it.
Not all influencers are created equal.
And I would say not all influencers are worth following,
as well, as following for a marketing purpose,
but also for your mental health.
And then, lastly, authenticity and creativity.
You know, TikTok really emphasizes,
you know, that authentic creative experience
over highly produced videos.
And let's talk about it a little bit more.
It has democratized content.
The algorithm is precise.
We're also seeing TikTok integrate more with e-commerce.
So we're seeing a lot more targeted
and sophisticated ads that you can find products there.
And this has led to a disruption of traditional advertising.
And, you know, brands are shifting their focus
from your typical commercials, newspapers, things like that,
and going all in on TikTok.
Let's talk a little bit more about the best practices.
This is a great slide to mark and to come back to.
So here are seven things to remember.
TikTok is all about prioritizing vertical videos.
Limiting the video length.
Again, that 50 to 60 seconds.
You can go longer, but I suggest not to.
It's all about the impactful visuals of videos.
Again, they reemphasize it, prioritize vertical videos.
And background, captions are all important
to creating fantastic TikTok content.
And now I wanna kinda go through some brands
that are on TikTok that I feel are doing a really good job.
You probably have heard of Duolingo.
They are kinda at the forefront of the B2B type of brand,
really using a mascot.
They've gone all-in on the challenges and trends
and music and things of that nature.
They are a fantastic resource to use
if you are in more of this B2B space
and aren't quite sure how to kind of crack that TikTok code.
Duolingo did, and they win all kinds of awards,
and they're a great follow.
For more of the B2C, the good old Starbucks
is a fantastic follow on TikTok as well.
They do a really wonderful job incorporating
user-generated content in their TikTok videos.
And if you're in the market to really do some research
when it comes to incorporating influencers
and regular people, (clicking tongue)
Starbucks is definitely the way to go for that one.
And then, finally, one of the things that you can go
and use is PandaDoc.
This is a platform that we've just recently moved in on
in the last, gosh, six months or so.
We are really leaning into our
"Customer Engagement Lab" podcast.
We wanna make sure that we take that podcast
and we apply those same principles
and have our content optimized for vertical video.
We've seen a pretty dramatic increase in overall followers.
We've had about 2,000 over the last two quarters,
so we feel like we're, you know, on the right path.
But with anything with social media marketing,
it's always important to not be afraid to take risks.
And one thing, too,
I wanna talk about when it comes to TikTok,
this is something that I've seen from my own experience.
We've kind of briefly touched on the algorithm
and how it kind of gets into your brain
based upon your engagement, views, liking, shares,
things of that nature.
One of the things that I've seen though
is TikTok requires a lot of content.
We're talking sometimes two to three videos a day.
Now, to the regular person, that may seem like,
yeah, you grab your video, you do a quick little dance,
you can upload three or four of those a day, no problem.
Unfortunately or fortunately, that's not always the case.
You know, social media marketing,
I think one of the great misconceptions of it
is that it is fast and easy, and it is not.
For a lot of companies,
you have to go through your brand team
and then your design team,
and sometimes you have to go through your legal team
to get approval before you can post anything.
And sometimes, you have to do three or four revisions.
One time, I worked for a bank,
and there was probably about six people
from marketing, legal, leadership
that had to approve everything that I put out on social.
So it just made keeping on trends pretty hard to do.
And so kinda get it out of your head
that you can do this fast and easy,
and that you can pump out 85 TikToks a week.
It takes time, it takes practice.
But the algorithm wants two to three a day.
So if you can't do that right off the bat, that's okay.
Take your time, plan it out.
You know, do, like, maybe five to 10 in the bank,
see what works, see what doesn't.
But take your time,
and if you can't commit to TikTok right away, that's okay.
Instagram, YouTube are other great places
that don't require as much content as TikTok does.
So that about sums up with kind of the behind-the-scenes,
some examples, and some history of TikTok.
As always, I am here to answer any questions.
If you have awesome examples of brands using TikTok,
send them my way.
I'm always looking for new and fun ways
to inspire the audiences that I connect with on social.
And I'm excited to keep talking,
and I will see you all in video two.
Thanks, everybody.
See you then.