TikTok Marketing mini-masterclass for businesses. How your company an use TikTok to market your business with expert Austin Armstrong.
THIS EPISODE AT-A-GLANCE
- Why should a business consider TikTok?
- Advice for creating a sustainable TikTok strategy
- Generating leads from TikTok
- Brands leveraging social media platforms
Full Podcast Transcription
Austin Armstrong:
So, if you want to grow your YouTube channel, for instance. And you put out a new YouTube video, you can do a shortened abbreviated version in a TikTok video and say - Hey, you know, here's X, Y, and Z. All of the value that you get in that YouTube video and then at the end of the TikTok video, you can say - You can watch this entire video on my YouTube channel. To learn more, click the link in my profile to check it out now.
Sarah Panus:
Hi, my name is Sarah Panus. I have spent the last two decades driving digital content for billion dollar brands. Now I help content marketers build winning brand storytelling strategies and reduce feelings of overwhelm and confusion. Join me as we discuss strategy, creativity, confidence, and building a better connection with your audience. Think of this as a creative content marketing jam session mixed with chicken soup for the soul. This is the Marketing With Empathy podcast.
Sarah Panus:
Hey, Hey, Kindred Speakers. Today, we're gonna have a mini masterclass on TikTok marketing for business. We have not talked about TikTok on the show. It is an incredibly popular and growing platform. And so we wanna talk about it. And joining me is TikTok expert, Austin Armstrong. Austin Armstrong is a digital marketer, public speaker and CEO of Socialty Pro, a digital marketing agency that specializes in TikTok marketing for businesses and search engine optimization. He's also the host of business talk, which is a TikTok marketing podcast, where he interviews real businesses that leverage TikTok to launch and scale their companies. Austin has posted more than 1900 videos on TikTok, tripling his own business and thousands more across his client accounts. He loves helping individuals and companies grow their online presence to generate brand awareness, thought leadership customers and product sales. Right. We gotta drive results by getting creative and thinking outside the box. So we're talking all things, TikTok marketing for businesses after a word from our sponsors.
Sarah Panus:
Welcome to the show, Austin. And so happy to have you here.
Austin Armstrong:
Thank you so much for having me on. I greatly appreciate it. And it's an honor.
Sarah Panus:
Yeah, well, okay. So first the big question, which is why, why should a business consider TikTok?
Why should a business consider TikToK?
Austin Armstrong:
Sure. So it is the fastest growing social media platform of all time. All eyes are on this platform right now, and we're all I are where there's mass attention. There is opportunity to market in basically every industry. It's also the most organic reach of any platform right now. Individuals, entrepreneurs, businesses, and every space are growing like crazy going viral every single day. And it's changing lives.
Sarah Panus:
I right here about the huge volume of growth and audience and engagement numbers and things like what are the current demographics of TikTok users right now?
Austin Armstrong:
Yeah, absolutely. So currently there's over 138 million monthly active users in the United States. First of all. So very important metric there. 57% of TikTok users are female. 43% are male and roughly 43% of the platform right now is 18 to 24 years old. So it's still slightly geared younger. Yeah. However it is starting to go older as more and more people are talking about it and getting adopted 32% of TikTok users are age between 25 and 34. And the smallest demographic right now is 3.4% of people that are 55 or older.
Sarah Panus:
Okay. Got it. So, okay. But that's good to see then that 25 to 34 year old range is growing. So about a third of the, of the users right now and okay. That's great.
Austin Armstrong:
Gen Z and millennials have taken over the platform. So if that is your, your audience, it is wide open for you.
Sarah Panus:
Excellent. Okay. So what is it about TikTok then that made you decide to specialize in it specifically for your business at social Ty pro and you know, with your clients? What, what do you love about TikTok?
Austin Armstrong:
Yeah. To be Frank with you? It, it changed my life. So I I'll I'll tell you a little bit about my story here. Not to digres too much, but no,
Sarah Panus:
Tell us more.
Austin Armstrong:
Great, great. So I had started my company about three years ago. Very much a part-time job side hustle, if you will. I was still working full-time as a digital marketing director at a drug and alcohol treatment center. And in the middle of the pandemic this was I believe June of last year. I, I go from that job. And so I had a two month runway of finances saved and talked to my wife and talked to my business partner and said, you know, what, should I try and get a job in the middle of the pandemic right now? Or should I use this opportunity to bet on myself, go all in on my company and see what I'm made of? So I decided to go all in on myself, test it out and even more. So I went all in on TikTok for some silly reason because this was the fastest growing platform.
Austin Armstrong:
Nobody was really talking about SEO search engine optimization on TikTok. So I thought I would give this a go see, would happen, give it 60 days. And, and see if I could actually use this as a tool to grow my business and, and generate income. And Sarah in a very short amount of time, I started to grow. I started to get clients. And in a matter of just a couple of months, I was then making the same amount out of money as I was at my full-time job. And now I make way more than that, but it has completely changed my life. And now I'm sorta on a mission, you know, circling back to your, your question here, I'm on this mission to just at least show people that it's an opportunity that it could also potentially change your life as well.
Sarah Panus:
Yeah, that's amazing. So we have actually similar timelines then it sounds like of our, of us running our own companies, cuz I started my own company initially as a side hustle, the end of 2019 and then when COVID hit, I was on the core side as well. And then I decided to go all in on running my own business too. So it's been a wild ride the last couple of years, hasn't it? And it's, it's really smart, you know, to niche in, on a, on a focused area. So I'm glad to hear that you're having so much success and that I can have you come on and share that wisdom, you know, with my audience and listeners who, who are working on the corporate side are running their own businesses or having teams where they need to figure this out from a digital marketing perspective. So then like to add onto that then like for EV all of those content marketers that are listening right now, what advice do you have to help them create a sustainable TikTok content strategy?
Advice For creating a sustainable tiktok strategy
Austin Armstrong:
So the first thing that I would do is I I'd recommend getting on the platform and doing some studying rather than just going in blind, putting out repurposed content from your O your other social media platforms, spend that time to actually do some research research. What similar creators are doing similar businesses are, are doing and learning the, the cadence and how videos are shot, how trends pop up, how they're executed all the features of the platform and whatnot, and spend some time studying it so that you feel like you're, you're comfortable. I would also backtracking a little bit, I would make sure that you have a really your buyer persona outlines because in any good marketing strategy, you need to know exactly who you're trying to reach to have the most likeliness of success so that you can craft your marketing message to that specific person. So that everything works. Now. What I like to do is I like to outline a couple different content pillars and content delivery strategies here. So this might get a little heady, but I think your audience can handle it here.
Sarah Panus:
As we bring, bring it on. Now this, this is I'm all about content pillars. So you just keep talking.
Austin Armstrong:
I love it. I love it. So for, I I'll use a real case example here. So one of our clients is a, is a therapist, and there's a lot of information that he can talk about as a therapist. He can talk about relationship coaching. He can talk about depression and anxiety and individual types of therapies that he offers. But he's also a narcissism expert. So what we did was we outlined all of these different categories of content that he's able to talk about. And then we broke them down into subtopics and questions that people frequently asked. I love using an SEO keyword word research tool for this. So you type in, you know, narcissist or narcissism, and you're gonna get a bunch of questions. Like, how do I know if I'm in a relationship with a narcissist or what is, what are the signs that a, that a narcissist is abusing me?
Austin Armstrong:
Or what are the ways that a narcissist manipulates your family members? You know, it's gonna spit out a million questions for each one, you as the expert in your space. We'll also just have frequently asked questions that you can outline. And what this will do is it'll give you a systematic approach to cranking out videos in each one of these categories so that you can assess trends. And so for this case, what we notice very quickly is that the narcissism oriented content was doing 10 X to a hundred X more views, engagement, and driving more followers than these other categories of content. So we said, okay, I'm gonna pivot and go all in on. What's actually working. So now we do 70 to 80% content around narcissism, but it's also important to promote these other, other things that he takes clients on as well. And so, because we've pivoted and gone all in on, what's actually growing the account and getting tons of engagement, it's increased our bottom line views on these other videos. So all tides rise together. As the saying, or all boats rise together with the tides are, you know, something along the how and testing different delivery styles as well.
Austin Armstrong:
So there's a lot of different ways that you can communicate on TikTok that that you can test out to see what works best for you as an individual creator, what you can consistently commit to and what holds people attention. So a couple really good content delivery styles that work well on TikTok are you can so it's important to immediately hook the audience in as well. So that first couple seconds, you don't have time to say, hi, my name is so and so, and I'm with X, Y, Z company. And today I'm talking about, you don't have enough time to do that. This is not YouTube. This is a short form platform. So you have to immediately address the topic of what you're talking about to stop that scroll. So a couple great ways to do that are if you're not camera, or if you are a little camera shy, you're not comfortable on camera.
Austin Armstrong:
You can have someone behind the camera ask you that question, which acts as the opening hook, and then you provide immediate value. And answer that question we found, this is a really easy way to deal with a lot of professionals that don't have experience with camera at all, rather than talking to the, the soulless eye of the camera lens. You're talking to a and behind the camera. And that seems to get it out a lot easier, or if you are perfectly comfortable on camera, you can just open the video up by turning that question into a statement rather than what are the signs of narcissism. You could open that up as here are the signs of narcissism, for instance. So that's a great way educating your content educating your audience. These are great ways to nurture an audience. Another popular method of, of communicating on TikTok is a conversational approach.
Austin Armstrong:
So basically, it's you talking to yourself but having a, a conversation so assume that you're asking a, a client or you're talking to a client and they have a a common question or a piece of information you have a piece of information that you, you think you're audience or your target audience is trying to know. So you have this back and forth conversation with yourself, your, your you have the camera positioned in, in opposite ways. So it looks like after you're editing that you're talking to yourself, and maybe you differentiate yourself with a different shirt or a pair of glasses or a jacket on, or something like that. Just to help the audience know, but you break it up line by line. And I did one today for instance, on I always wanted to get a, my dream job is, is that Google, but I have no idea how to get started.
Austin Armstrong:
And then I respond to myself by saying, well, have you ever heard of, of grow with Google? And then I have my opposite self saying, what's that? And I sort of go through this conversation and explain an educational piece of content that the audience would like to know. And that's a really fun, clever way to communicate information, but there's a million different ways that you can create TikTok videos, there's trend that you can jump on and pay attention to and apply that to your industry and, and your business. But it's all about testing, different styles, testing, different pieces of information, and seeing what works best for you, as well as what works best for your audience, what they're engaging with so that you can clearly double down.
Sarah Panus:
And so for people who are, aren't using TikTok yet, I mean, a lot of what you hear with TikTok too, is you may, may think, oh, it's all dancing, right? There's so much choreographed dances and things that happen on TikTok, but from a business perspective, that could be a hard sell, right? Like what, what we're gonna like dance on, on camera. And I know that TikTok is way more than that, but like, do you say then to anyone, any clients or someone listening, that's like, oh dude, it's all dancing. That's the trends. And we can't do that.
Austin Armstrong:
Well, it, it is, it is all, it is 100% dancing on the put, no, I'm just you absolutely do not need to dance. You don't need to lip sync. You can purely educate your audience with valuable information and, and you'll succeed. I have, I've never really danced on the platform. I might, you know, jump on a little trend here or there, but 99.9% of my content is, is educational as is all of our clients. That's a common misconception and it really comes from when somebody first logs into the platform, the algorithm doesn't know what you like. So it sends you some of the most popular content out there. And because going back to the demographics, a lot of the people actively creating content. This is the differentiator here, creating content versus lurking on the platform and consuming content. But a lot of the people that are creating the content are that younger demographics. So they are leaning into these trends. They are dancing, they are doing some lip syncing music videos and, and, and whatnot. But there is a very thriving and fast growing educational aspect of TikTok in every industry.
Sarah Panus:
Yeah. And what do you think is like the best practice around frequency of how often a company should be posting on TikTok as part of their content strategy?
Austin Armstrong:
As much as you can commit two on a consistent basis, I would say the bare minimum would be one per day, and you can batch content ahead of time. Remember, these are really only 32nd long videos. So it's, if you go in with a lot of planning, you can execute these much faster than you can imagine. If you can post more, if you can commit to 3, 4, 5 a day, what that's gonna allow you to do is build up momentum faster, fail faster, and learn to succeed faster. It's just more at bats. So there's no magic number here of, you need to post three every single day in order to be successful, but whatever you can consistently commit to is going to build up that long term muscle of content creating
Sarah Panus:
And has tic TikTok, can you preschedule within the platform. So like, if you create at least in advance, are you able to load them in? And so you don't have to schedule them live each time. How does that work?
Austin Armstrong:
So not really, their are a couple tools and you can the so on the desktop version of TikTok. So tiktok.com, you can actually schedule posts out. However, it's a little wonky. It doesn't really give you a lot of the features. It doesn't let you add text on screen. It doesn't let you add music. It doesn't let you trim clips and anything like that. So it's not the best method. What I would recommend is spending the time to batch record and batch edit in the app. And you can save them as drafts. This is the most efficient way to do this. So you can fully edit everything in, in one setting, save them all as drafts. And then when you're ready to post you, just go in real quick and publish it. And that'll take less than one minute once it's already finished. So that's the fastest way to currently do it. I'm sure they're gonna roll out other features on the desktop version and whatnot, but that's the current best way to take advantage of
Sarah Panus:
It. And then is that also though something that you help your clients with? Like, do you do publish, like, do you publish content for your clients who are like, I, I don't have the time to do that or my team doesn't and so they outsource it to you. Is that one of your offerings?
Austin Armstrong:
Yeah, so we're actually a, a full service process for TikTok growth. So we do everything from coaching you on camera to execute videos in a way that works for TikTok work with you on developing the content strategy. We actually send a comprehensive content strategy and outline everything like the pillars and the different styles of videos. Like I had mentioned earlier, we do all of the editing and then dedicated account managers as well, L that we'll post every single day on your behalf. So you don't have, all you need to do is, is send us some raw videos on what we tell you to do, and we take care of the rest for you.
Sarah Panus:
Cool. Okay. That's great. Cause I know I have a lot of big brands listening right now that I know aren't like they all have teams internally, but also are reliant on a lot of external partners to help. So. Perfect. Okay. That's great. All right. So stick around guys. We're gonna take a quick break. And after the break, Austin's gonna share how to generate sales and leads on TikTok, how to grow other social platforms using TikTok and which brands are doing it well,
COMMERCIAL break
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GEnerating leads from Tiktok
Sarah Panus:
Okay, Austin, this has been great so far, so let's just keep checking along on our little mini master class here. All right. So how does a company actually make money or generate leads from TikTok? You and I both have previously worked on the corporate side. And so obviously it can't just be fun bells and whistles and storytelling isn't which I always find is like a common misconception of, well, how is this all this gonna actually drive leads or sales? So talk us through that. Like, what are you seeing right now in that space?
Austin Armstrong:
So you have to have the first threshold you have to hit is, is 1000 followers on the platform, which is relatively easy to get and you can boost your profile up and, and not to get that pretty quickly. But what that does is it allows you to add a link in your profile, which is where the vast majority of your leads are gonna be generated from this both for personal creator accounts. And now business accounts, you need a, a minimum of 1000 followers when you get to that point. There's a lot of different ways that you can drive leads to whatever your, your goal is. So a typical best practice is is to have like a link tree option or a beacons option. There's a million of these link expander tools. You can just drive them to your, your website, your homepage, a, a sales page, a, a lead gen page anything along those lines.
Austin Armstrong:
But I would recommend using a beacons or a link tree. I personally use beacons. And what this is gonna do is it allows you the users to click on that one link and then it expands and shows them a couple of different link options. And so in my profile, for instance, I capture leads and drive sales in a couple of different ways. The primary way that I do this is I link them to my Calendarly, where they can schedule a free 15 minute call with me. And when they're, I have pre qualifying questions, so I can learn a little bit about their business, they're fully aware of our pricing, so that it's not a waste of anyone's time if they just simply can't afford us at this time and a, a bunch of qualifying information. And then I that entire process is automated.
Austin Armstrong:
It sends email and adds it to my calendar. We jump on a call and I, I typically will sell them on that call then. And I love this because to be honest with you, I hate sales. I'm not a great salesperson. I hate cold calling people. I hate cold outreach. So I had to find out something that works for me and what works, what best for me is just putting my best information out there for free so that they know I can trust me. And I make it really easy for them to click that link in my bio schedule, a 15 minute call with me, and they're already hyped up. They've already been sold by the time they get on that call. So all I have to do is is confirm everything with them.
Austin Armstrong:
And then we're off to the races. If you have a little bit longer of a funnel depending what it is that you do you can send people into a free opt-in. This is very common practice as well. If you have a free checklist or a free ebook or something like that, to capture their email addresses or any sort of lead capture information that you want, that would be helpful for say your sales team, you can capture all of that information, then have that follow up process. I personally like to automate a lot of this. So I have an funnel in place where they for a I offer an SEO checklist as well as a TikTok checklist. They put their email in that it automatically adds them to my email drip campaign sequence. And then it, it sends them a, a list of emails.
Austin Armstrong:
I think the, the length of it is about a month right now it'll send emails every three or four days for a month. And in those emails, it, it qualifies it nurtures, and it sells in those emails as well. There's links to upsells like digital downloads and online courses that I have hourly consultations with myself as well, again, that free Calendly link so that they can schedule a call with me. If you're in the e-com space at, at all I would probably recommend driving them to some of your top product pages, pay attention to the analytics on your website. If you're, if you're have it set up with like Google analytics or you're using Shopify look at which pages on your website are converting the most amount of leads into actual paying clients and send people to those pages.
Austin Armstrong:
Sometimes it's not as intuitive as you might think it is. You might think it's this one page, but in reality, it's this other page pay attention to the data and, and drive people that way. Those are a lot of the, the best ways to drive sales. And it is going back to the content side of things too, a little bit, it's important to not sell, sell, sell in every single video. Nobody wants a infomercial on TikTok. Yes. So what you wanna do is sort of, I, I, I like to follow like a three approach. So a lot of the content is gonna be broad awareness, style content, really general information to attract a large new audience top of the funnel, bring people in. So they know what my accounts about and and increases your followers and whatnot. And then a lot of additional content from there is going to be nurturing, content, educational content, answering specific questions, showing tutorials, showing case studies of how you've helped your clients taking people behind the scenes, all of this nurturing content so that they they learn more about you.
Austin Armstrong:
They learn more about your business. They take immediate value away, and then every, so often maybe one in 10 videos, maybe one in 20 videos, you can do a hard sell. So I'll do something like I do, I like to lean into FOMO a little bit, so I I'll, I'll say something like my team and I are now accepting new TikTok clients. If you'd like to, you know, I'll, I'll highlight everything that we do. We help, we coach you. We outline a content strategy for you. We edit for you, we post it on your account. But we're only taking two more clients right now. So if you're interested, if you're serious, you're ready to change your life. Click the link in my profile to schedule a call with me. I would love to work with you. And I'll do a really hard sell like that.
Austin Armstrong:
And I'll do occasional hard sales for our email list as well, because I know our automated email list sell. So I'll do something like, did you know that I created a free TikTok checklist for you? It highlights X, Y, and Z. You can get it right now in my bio, in my bio click the link in there and, and and get it right now, you know, something along those lines and that'll generate a couple hundred emails and, and automate the entire process. But I do those very few and far between because those videos never gonna go viral, but they're highly converting, but it's, it, it goes hand in hand with the other two tiers of content of, of broad content to a, to appeal, to more people, to bring them into your funnel, the nurturing content, and then ultimately few and far between hard sell videos.
Brands leveraging social media platforms
Sarah Panus:
Okay. Those are great. The are some great examples. Thank you. And then, so then that's within TikTok itself. So most brands are active on multiple social channels. So how can a business leverage TikTok to grow their other social media platforms?
Austin Armstrong:
Yeah, so there's a, a couple great ways that you can do this. So right in your profile, you can, on, on TikTok, you can connect your Instagram and your YouTube directly. So you would go into your edit profile and directly connect them. And then on your profile, there's a little social media icon that somebody can click on and it'll directly take them to either your Instagram or your YouTube account. So this is the, this is available to everybody immediately upon creating an account. I would highly recommend doing that. Another thing that you can do is using that link in your bio, once you hit a thousand followers, if you're using a tool like beacons or link tree you can add your social media icons in that beacons and link tree as well. And people will funnel over to your to your other social media platforms.
Austin Armstrong:
And you can add any platform that you want on there as well. A couple other ways that you can leverage TikTok as well is to just create some videos from time to time. So if you want to grow your YouTube channel, for instance and you put out a new YouTube video, you can do a shortened abbreviated version in a TikTok video and say, Hey, you know, here's X, Y, and Z. You know, all of the value that you get in that, that YouTube video. And then at the end of the TikTok video, you can say, you can watch this entire video to learn more on my YouTube channel, click the link in my profile to check it out now. And that's a great way to drive traffic over as well.
Sarah Panus:
I love that.
Austin Armstrong:
Yeah. there's a lot of different, great hacks. I can, I can give you here. Another one that I do is the, the TikTok algorithm sometimes is a little sensitive with their policies of, of of content. And so even for me, who creates digital marketing, oriented content and shares, useful websites and whatnot. And so sometimes a video will get flagged and temporarily taken down until I can submit an appeal and it, you know, goes back. But what I do, I take advantage of that, and I'll create a new video and I'll say TikTok doesn't want you to see this video and I'll, I'll highlight what I talked about in that video. But I'll upload it onto Instagram and I'll say, but you can watch the original video on my Instagram because they don't censor. And I, there's a couple things that I do.
Austin Armstrong:
I like to do there at one there's that FOMO, they go over, they check it out, but I said something controversial there. I said, Instagram, doesn't censor. Of course, that's not true. Of course, Instagram sensors. And what that does is it causes people to run to the comments and say, what do you mean Instagram? Doesn't censor, of course they censor. And they have to feel like they, you know, their, their voice matters. They put that out there, but those comments fuel the engagement of the video, which sends a positive signal to TikTok that this is a highly engaged. So it sends it to more people. So I'm taking advantage of a negative situation and flipping it on its head and turning it into a cross pollination method to grow my Instagram account.
Sarah Panus:
You're sneaky. I like it. And it's not sneaky bad. It's just clever, I guess, is a better it's clever. Okay. So in your opinion then, like what brands right now are using TikTok? Well, cause I would love to just like for people listening, they can check those out for inspiration.
Austin Armstrong:
So there's a couple there's, there's tons of great companies and brands in every industry. And I, I would recommend just searching for your industry and seeing what pops up, but a couple that, that that are top of mind, one is duo lingo. The the, the language learning app with the little green owl, they are so funny on, on TikTok. They, all of the videos have the owl costume, somebody in the Al costume. And and they're just doing different TikTok trends. And and they'll like put sad music on and, and like a rain effect. And, and it'll say on screen, like when somebody just uses Google translate instead of learning a, a, a new language, and it's like a sad, emotional thing with the owl crying, it's like a really fun, funny, relatable story. So they're one, they have millions of followers.
Austin Armstrong:
I'd highly check recommend checking. I duo lingo. Another one that comes to mind is Ryan heir a they're sort of a bud airline, but they're, they're really funny. What they've done is they just gave total free reign to somebody on their, in their marketing department to say, you know, just have fun on, on this TikTok thing and see what you can do. And, and what they do is they just take pictures of are there are planes that are on the tarmac, and there's a filter on TikTok where it'll just take the eyes and the mouth of your face. Yep. Okay. And you can move the eyes around and the, and the lips and stuff. And, and they put that on the plane. And the plane says funny things and relatable things to the industry. And people love this. Absolutely love it.
Austin Armstrong:
They jump on trends. They say really funny stuff. They, they use trending audio and, and background music and stuff. And they have millions of followers as well. And there really is no other airline that I've seen on TikTok. So they are dominating. This is an airline that nobody really talks about. Nobody really thinks about, but they are getting hundreds of millions of people viewing them on a, on a monthly basis because they thought outside of the box, they did something clever and, and they're getting their, their brand out there so that when people are looking for airlines, you know, they're booking online, they're gonna see Ryan air and they're gonna say, oh, that's a TikTok brand. They're doing something funny. They're doing something clever. Let me try them out. So those are, those are a couple that come to mind. If you wanna more, if you wanna check out one of our clients, for instance, if you wanna see some of the examples. Yeah. the Jim Breon, which is J I M B R I L L O N, is the therapist that I brought up earlier, where we have somebody behind the camera asking him a question and he proceeds to provide as much helpful information as possible. He's about to hit a hundred thousand for Allers on TikTok. But hi, his his private practice, he's a therapist is on a waiting list now because it's been so crazy for him. So that's a real
Sarah Panus:
That's great. It's a great example.
Austin Armstrong:
Yeah. So I'd recommend, those are three accounts to check out.
Sarah Panus:
Cool. Thank you so much. Okay. So before we wrap up, I'd like to just get like two quick actionable tips from you. So just say the first things that come to your mind. Okay. So first one is then for the company that's listening right now that hasn't started has not started TikTok yet. Like what should they do first?
Austin Armstrong:
The first thing I would do is sign up for TikTok, grab your company's name as your username, and then just spend some time in app, just start studying it look at similar creators to your industry and just look at other educators and other business own in general to see what's working for them study before you start.
Sarah Panus:
Perfect. And then for the company listening right now, that's already on TikTok and they're looking to advance to like the next level, what should they do next?
Austin Armstrong:
Try different styles because if you're if you're not seeing growth, but you're doing the same thing over and over again, that's the definition of insanity, right? So you have to try different styles. So pay attention to what big creators are doing. Test that conversational style test directly educating, maybe sell less, maybe provide more free information maybe switch up your hashtag to to do really specific hashtags to what the video topic is about. Or maybe if you're doing that and it's not working test, not using any hashtags, you gotta be testing a bunch of different things to see what works for you. And then when you get a hit, when you get a video that knocks outta the park, do 10 more exactly like that one.
Sarah Panus:
Okay. Beautiful. All right. So how can people connect with you online Austin?
Austin Armstrong:
Yeah. So if you wanna learn really great case studies of how other businesses are leveraging TikTok, I would recommend checking out my podcast. That's business talk business T K business talk, podcast.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. And you can connect with me on TikTok as well at social Ty pro. And if you want to get in touch with me I would just recommend click in the link in my TikTok bio. So you can see how my funnel works for yourself.
Sarah Panus:
Yeah. And also, cuz you said the link in your bio had, is that where those checklists are they still there? For the TikTok checklist and the S co checklist, you mentioned?
Austin Armstrong:
Absolutely. Everything is right in that Beacon's Link's
Sarah Panus:
Perfect guys. Well, there's tons of value right there. So Austin, thanks so much for coming on the show. This was, this was a great mini masterclass on TikTok marketing for businesses. Thank you so much.
Austin Armstrong:
Thank you, Sarah. I hope it was helpful.
Sarah Panus:
It really was. All right, folks. That was Austin Armstrong, Digital Marketing TikTok expert and CEO of Socialty Pro. Until next time, Kindred Speakers.
Closing Remarks
Sarah Panus:
Hi fives for finishing another episode. When faced with an obstacle, you’re the type of person who gets better instead of bitter. I hope you feel creatively inspired and invite you to check back often for more goodness from me and my guest. If you want more actionable advice and inspiration head over to kindredspeak.com for show notes, all discount codes from today's episode, and to sign up for my newsletter. Subscribe now to the Marketing With Empathy podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcast. And if you'd be so kind, will you please leave me a review. This helps my podcast get noticed by others. Keep smiling.
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ABOUT SARAH PANUS
Sarah Panus is a brand storytelling marketing strategist, Minnesota mom, and owner of Kindred Speak, LLC, a remote consultancy that helps corporations attract upper-funnel leads that drive bottom-funnel results through storytelling. Her mission is to add value to the world by humanizing brand+consumer connections. Her online courses teach content professionals inside corporations think like Editorial Directors for their brand to drive stronger results while enjoying their jobs more. She’s spent the last 20 years helping brands including Sleep Number, Starbucks, Nestle Waters, Christos Bridal, Game Crazy, Cone Inc, and others, speak a kindred language with their audiences, driving brand advocacy and millions in revenue and brand engagements. Learn more at www.kindredspeak.com. Follow Sarah on Instagram and LinkedIn.
