EP. 12: Do I really need my business to be on TikTok? with guest Penny Walker (BarBrusa Social)
What’s this episode about?
Whenever I talk to people about TikTok it feels like TikTok is just one step too far in marketing their business. There are so many changes to Instagram ALL the time, it’s hard enough keeping up with one platform, never mind starting a new one from scratch. AND its all video - no thanks.
In this episode we chat to Penny about TikTok and why, if you can get your head around it, it could be a total game changer for your business.
Episode key takeaways:
How TikTok is similar and different to Instagram
Will I find my ideal clients there, isn’t it for teenagers?
How to work smartly so you can do Insta and TikTok with loads of extra work
Practical tips and accounts to follow to get started
Common mistakes (and how to avoid them)
INTRODUCING: PENNY WALKER
Penny is the owner of social media agency @barbrusa_social. Specialising in teaching fun-loving, lifestyle brands to create personality-led content for TikTok and Instagram. Her goal is to give you the skills, confidence and mindset to produce effective short-form video fast, without eating into your busy day. With more than six years of experience working in content, design and social media, Penny can help you to raise brand awareness, connect with new audiences and boost your monthly revenue. And - best of all - you’ll have a blast doing it.
KEY LINKS:
WEBSITE: www.barbrusa.com
INSTAGRAM: @barbrusa_social
TIKTOK: @barbrusa_social
Sign up to Penny’s email list for more tips on Tik Tok
Subscribe to the Growing Pains podcast
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Read the transcript:
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Hello, and welcome to growing pains. The marketing podcast for parent and baby brands who want to grow and get more consistent sales, but without the overwhelm of feeling like you have to be online 24 7, I'm Sophie, your host, and a Facebook and Instagram ad strategist who specializes in parent and baby brands as well as a mom of two.
Join me each week as I alongside some wonderful guests, she had practical tips and advice about how you can use and combine marketing strategies to get more impact for your effort. A quick warning, before we start, I can get a little bit sweary, so just be careful of any little ears listening along.
Sophie: So today I'm thrilled to be here with penny from Bob bruiser. Penny is the owner of the social media agency, Bob bruiser, social specializing in teaching fun lapping lifestyle brands to create personality led content for TechTalk and Instagram. Her goal is to give [00:01:00] you skills and confidence and mindset to produce effective short-form video.
Fast without eating into your busy day, which sounds ideal for us. I imagine with more than six years of experience working in content design and social media, penny can help you to raise your brand awareness connect with new audiences and boost your monthly revenue and best of all, you'll have a blast doing it.
So penny, welcome to the podcast. Hello. Hello.
Penny: for having me.
Sophie: You're very welcome. So that is the official intro. But we like to get to know you a little bit more before we get started. So give us a bit of an overview. What's your work family life set up like,
Penny: well say I'm a mom of three . I possess three teenagers. So if you'd see me know why the wrinkles are there, I have an Italian husband. I did live in Italy for like 23 years in Milan. So we moved to London about six years ago, which is more or less around the time that I started this. And let me see.
So based in London, but there's this weird sort of [00:02:00] double life between here and Italy and my husband cooks. That's all you
Sophie: Oh,
Penny: And does the shopping.
Sophie: Now that's what we like. And is it classic Italian cooking.
Penny: Yeah.
Sophie: Oh, amazing. Okay. I'm really jealous.
Penny: It keeps my manicure looking a bit better from.
Sophie: Last much longer. Does he do the washing up as well though?
Penny: Sometimes, sometimes he does. And Yeah.
so based in under, so I started all of this when I moved over from Italy and I did the digital moms, et cetera, and just really had run businesses myself, but realized quite far. Much preferred the sort of social media site that I was quite good at that, and I enjoyed it and the marketing.
So when Instagram introduced wheels of the thinkers about a year and a half ago, now, I thought this is, this is everything like that. I literally felt like this is what I'd been waiting for because we'd been banging around the old ID TV, like wondering if there was really any point and what we were trying to achieve.
Anyway, that came as soon as that came, loved it. And then I thought, hang on a minute, but there's also a Ted talk. And [00:03:00] just stop. Lazing around and honestly, wished I'd started way back then. I just started sniffing around. But anyway, it dawned on me quite soon that I should be doing.
Sophie: Oh, my goodness. Amazing. And I think as well, tick-tock really took off in that during a lockdown when
Penny: yeah.
So take off exactly that. So I think as soon as sort of professionals were left at home from work The tech moved away from being sort of musically platform. It was before for teenagers and dancing singing. It's still very much that as well. However, then it became more about education infotainment, every kind of niche possible started appearing and it grew massively.
So I think it is the most downloaded app in the UK last year, apart from gaming.
Sophie: Yeah.
Penny: And I think that works out at about one in four people being on Tik TOK or having a Tik TOK account. And Yeah.
so it completely moved on and it's still very much an under saturated market, in fact. So I think it's just the momentum is growing and growing, growing.
So it's a good time to start noticing [00:04:00] and wondering whether it's right for your business
Sophie: Brilliant. Well, we're going to dig into all of that. And before we do, I'm going to get your views on the really important stuff. Okay. Are you ready? Quick fire round. Okay. Tea or coffee?
Penny: coffee,
Sophie: Dogs or cats.
Penny: neither.
Sophie: Oh, nice. Oh, nice. Outside bagels or crumpets.
Penny: Crumpets with buttock
Sophie: with butter. Lots of melted butter. A beach or pool.
Penny: beach,
Sophie: Nice winter or summer.
Penny: winter
Sophie: Oh, I was thinking, cause he lived near the so long. It might be
Penny: skiing.
Sophie: asking. Oh, good point. Yeah. Color or monochrome.
Penny: Oh, that's hard.
Sophie: I not call up and motivate a group to early morning or late night.
Oh, well, good question. Which do you prefer?
Penny: If it's my brain function, that's required early morning,
Sophie: I'm nice. Yeah, but if it's enjoyment purposes,[00:05:00]
Penny: obviously.
Sophie: Brilliant. Okay. So let's get in to the magical, slightly misunderstood world of tick-tock. So, okay. As we've just done a little pre-chat and as you probably realize, like I'm not on Tik TOK yet. And I think mainly it, I still have that kind of like preconception of it being for teenagers. Instagram feels a bit more familiar.
I could, I feel like I can find my people maybe a bit easier. So I was wondering if you could just talk us through like the high level differences between Instagram and Tech-Talk like for someone's totally starting new. What are the differences, especially, I guess, with reels and Tik TOK videos.
Penny: Firstly, I'd get rid of the high level because Tik TOK is effectively the skanky cousin of Instagram,
Sophie: Nice.
Penny: right? So you're absolutely right on Instagram. You've grown your audience. You probably know who a lot of those people are. Right. You've grown that over time and probably your likes and your comments and your views reflect the amount of people who are following you.
So you'd expect as you grow. [00:06:00] That's going to agree with you more or less. And on tech it's not like that at all. So anybody you, anybody can compete with the big players, you could go viral overnight, mentally. It just depends on the quality of your video. Not even on the quality, just how much people like it.
And we watch time. Have you posted a video that people like to be watched? That will be the key to your success. So the big difference I see is that. It's more of an even playing field, but if you take Instagram now it's become so complicated. With say, imagine if you're new on Instagram, you need to know how to do stories.
Grid posts, carousels reels. Guides. You've got quite sophisticated messaging, which is great, but if you go on tip top, you're just making a video. That's what you're doing.
Sophie: Okay. Yeah,
Penny: your energy is focused on making a video. You can make very short videos you can make, make on the fly videos. If you imagine the kind of content that you might be doing for stories, for example, or do you talk in your stories that would, that could be a technical video.
[00:07:00] So you're keeping these really.
Sophie: I, wow. Okay.
Penny: So I'd say top level, those are the differences. And I think the other difference is your audience. So you can grow it's, it's unlikely that your Tik TOK audience is also on Instagram at the moment. Some people will be. And when you start on Tinto, you'll find some people will follow you.
They're already there, but there aren't that many sort of early adopters in this sort of small business world. So it's a whole new audience, which is great because then you're going to be able to push them back to your Instagram or to your website or to other places. And yeah, say I think it's all new.
They're more likely to be fans and. More than people you're likely to follow back.
Sophie: Yeah.
Penny: Whereas on Instagram you tend to sort of perhaps follow it back or, you know, you, you, new people, it's different.
Sophie: Yeah, it's a bit more of almost a business community. Isn't it? I do find that with Instagram, sometimes I find like you become almost a bit of echo chamber of like other businesses sometimes rather than your actual customers, especially for like econ businesses. [00:08:00] Like actually all your comments are from other econ businesses and it's a really lovely, supportive community, but actually sometimes it's a bit frustrating.
Like how can I actually get in front? Customers who are going to mind? My take, what we're saying is actually that's a bit more accessible on Tik TOK. Yeah. Brilliant. And that, in of the logistics of it, the length of the videos on TechTalk, is it the same as reels?
Penny: Yeah.
say it all circles back with reels and take, talk to me. What's time. Are people watching Andrew watching your video? So are they completing watching and then watching again? And that's where the algorithm, judges, the heal your content is really useful and that they'll push it out to more people and It lately.
So towards the beginning of the year, people have been getting away with doing very short videos, 5, 6, 7, 8 seconds. And just overlaying with text and a bit of background music. And you know, it could be, say beach or, you know, a nice scene or something. And then, because it takes you longer to read the texts and the video.
Then you're pushing up your time. So this has been a clever ploy. People, [00:09:00] people do it all the time. They do, or it's harder to do it on rails because it says, watch again, say it kind of breaks that flow, but it would just sort of leads back on Tik TOK. So it's a, it's a sneaky ploy. I would say for people starting out on tech talk, keep them short because it's hard to make an engaging video that's long when you're new and you're not used to it.
So I'd go for over something around 12 seconds. Try not to go over 20. I would however, say, try out lots of different lengths. Try things. Trial on one. You know, if your content is engaging and you're explaining something, maybe you're all going to go quite a lot longer. Try it. It may not be for everybody.
People may scroll on, but for the audience, that's genuinely interested in understanding that you know, that they're going to watch it. So that's happened to me. I might have explained something quite lengthy and it's not for everybody, but you'll see over time as you gain new followers, these videos, pickup.
Sophie: Yeah. What's the maximum time you can do is a minute.
Penny: No it's 10 minutes.
Sophie: 10 minutes. Oh my [00:10:00] goodness.
Penny: Say the maximum until last week was three minutes and you don't see many, three minutes, but it's great for comedy skirt. It can be great for expanding a recipe. It can be great for a longer explanation or gardeners people that got using it. Most people don't. But as of last week, they've introduced 10 seconds, a 10 minutes, sorry, which as far as I can see, you can only do it from your desktop, but he should be able to do it on the phone soon as well.
And that is direct competition with YouTube because what happens is Tik TOK is start they're short videos. Like they almost do tasters and teasers on Tik TOK, and then finish. The full version on YouTube. So they're trying to grab that segment of the audience. And now by doing that, they've actually opened themselves up to compete with the big sort of, you know, Netflix.
Sophie: Yeah.
Penny: Yeah.
So that, so their competitors and I spoke about this a bit last week on LinkedIn, I think that the BBC has a program at the moment called Cheetos, which is 10 minute episodes. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's quite quiet, but I haven't. seen it, but it's it's quite popular [00:11:00] and it's just a series of 10 minute episodes.
So you could do that on Tik TOK now. So it's kind of. The sky is the limit really? We're sort of early days and we'll see what happens, but Yeah.
I'd say definitely keep it short at first while you're sort of getting good at them.
Sophie: Yeah, absolutely. And so I guess, are we saying that everyone's audience is there or. I like, how do you find, do you know what I mean? How do you find out if your audience is on tech talk? Like, so I guess most of my audience is their audience would be parents, essentially, whether they're buying for themselves, whether they're buying for their kids, it's parents.
So what kind of segments are there and how do you find them?
Penny: They're there they are there. Right? So the way you go about finding where you are. So I don't know if you know this, but communities are divided very top level on Ted talk by talks. That could be God and talk artists, talk, parent, talk, baby, talk, this kind of thing. So you'd go onto the discovery page.
Which is a bit like the [00:12:00] reels one, the Instagram one, and just type in parenthood, baby talk, whatever your keywords are. It doesn't have to be talk. It could just be whatever you feel your audience keywords are and just have a look. Three, what tape talk delivers. So you'll be able to see using. So people who use those words in their account names, videos.
So the top videos you can filter the videos by what's been shown in the last month. So it's more up-to-date information, not just forever on Tik TOK. You can look at hashtags. People are using. And also when you look, it delivers you, these videos to go through I literally looked through all of those for inspiration.
You're going to start understanding what the accounts are doing a really good job. Look at the views. Have they got lots and lots of years, have they got views in the thousands that would make me think that's a well received video. People have enjoyed watching it and I had to go and look at everything else that account has done, but also take talk will then give you less in between the videos of other things people have looked for. In that name. So if you've put in [00:13:00] baby talk, then it might be babies of Tech-Talk baby products baby outfits, baby Belk, you know, and then you can go into toward that. So people talk about data being a rabbit hole. It is, but actually in that sense, that's an initial part of your research. You do need to do quite a lot of scrolling , to tell the algorithm what you're interested in.
Because it knows you've hovered on a video and it's going to start feeding you a lot of that seminar content. So once you get into that flow, you'll just be automatically delivered more of that content. What you really want to do is see what other people are doing. See what is working. So you're looking at the length of the videos.
You're looking at the music they're using. Are they using multi clips? Are they doing voiceovers? Are they showing their faces? You know, just literally go through what they're doing and see if you can recreate that because whatever that thing is working.
Sophie: Yeah. Okay, brilliant. So I guess the next step really on from that is you create these videos and maybe you get loads of views, people [00:14:00] follow you on that. Can you then really use it for business or is it more of a social platform?
Penny: No, you can definitely use it for business. So I think initially when you start out on Ted talk, , you have to decide what kind of account you want. Do you want the business account? So a business account is good. If you want to link immediately with zero followers to your website. Which that might be an important business decision.
You could do that with a business account. You don't have as much access to the audio library a bit like on rails when you get the innovated music, it's Okay.
It's not bad. And it works well for many people and you can also have a tick talk shop. So I don't know if you've
Sophie: Oh,
Penny: but that's not the same as Shopify is actually.
Take talk shop with take talks. If you're selling products, you want to go in with a business account. The other thing it allows you to do immediately is to live stream and you can sell on your live streams as well as have the shop catalog feed on your account.
Sophie: Okay. And that directly links to your website does that. So they'd click on a product
Penny: No, it's a Tecplot it's a tick tock catalog.
Sophie: but would they [00:15:00] pay, how would they pay through Tik TOK?
Penny: Three TechTalk.
Sophie: I, wow. Okay. So it's all in app.
Penny: Yeah.
it's very, it's very new. It's very new. And I have actually got, I've got an IgE live. I did on it with, with someone who had to go and you sell a lot through live streaming, so it's a very new approach to business, but I think it's just very much the humanity of Tik TOK is that if people know you, they're more likely to buy from you.
So if you're able to go on a live stream and talk about your. You're in you're in business. However, the other choice is to open what used to be called a creator account, which is a personal public account where you do have access to the training. So I would say if it's not as much about setting your products or you don't need access to your website immediately, I would go with that till you reach a thousand followers, do your brand awareness, join in with the essence of the platform twice and trends do some videos about who you are, why you're back.
Talk to the camera bit so people can get to know you. And then again, just by showing this level of personality, you're actually warming up your [00:16:00] clients, right?
Sophie: Yeah. And then switched to a business account
Penny: What do you can, or you didn't necessarily have to have a thousand followers. You can go live and you can add your a link to your link tree was your website or whatever you want. But from, from the, from the start, you can link to your Instagram. So that's pretty important.
Sophie: Okay, so straight away you can link to Instagram. It's just, then you get a second link to like a website or link tree or whatever. Once you'd hit a thousand followers. And I mean, hitting a thousand followers on Instagram is, is pretty hard work these days out on Tik TOK. Are we saying it's a bit easier we think to get to a thousand followers
Penny: I think there's a much broader audience, so I've got more followers on Tik TOK than I do on Instagram. And I've spent a lot less time on, on TedTalk comparatively. So I think you can, I think the ability to grant a large audiences here I think by sticking firmly in your niche, you're bound to great quick.
I don't stay. I don't stay exactly firmly in my niche because I like to do city trends. You compare them to your business, but I think, you know, [00:17:00] you want to be having fun a bit as well, but Alicia's doing really well. And yes, you can, you can grow, you can grow a lot quicker because you have this ability to go five or.
You know, you could have a video, your third video could get you a million views.
Well, once you've got a minute views, you're going to have all the followers that come with that.
Sophie: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, it sounds really exciting.
Penny: It, it.
Sophie: yeah. And you mentioned just before, as well about hashtags, what, what's the sort of strategy there? With Instagram, you can see I've 30 and
Penny: Yeah.
So you don't have half as much space on T talk to write captions or add your hashtags. So you want to, you can probably do a max of five of which a little bit like Instagram. Mainly have them under a million, but I would always recommend sticking in a biggie just because you have this ability to go viral, you know, stick in a big one, see how you get on.
I find it actually works quite well, so I wouldn't feel too constrained by those rules.
Sophie: Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. So I guess one of the big things that comes up [00:18:00] when I talk to my clients is time and how we can like market our businesses without us solely doing marketing for our businesses and nothing else. So if you're already focusing on Instagram or another platform, can you easily incorporate Tik TOK or would you need like a whole different strategy?
Penny: Right. So I think if you want to go on Ted talk, you, you sort of need to allot some time to take it seriously. And that doesn't mean it's gonna take up all of your time, but you do, you need, if you're gonna do it, have a good crack at it. Right. I would say. Differently to Instagram. There's lots of different ways you can make videos.
So as we touched on before, you can make videos that are like stories where you just hop on, say something. That's a video, you know, you don't have to have beautifully crafted videos. Now, if you're making beautifully crafted videos for your reels, they're probably going to do just as well on Tik TOK, I would say either download them when you're making the rail before you've put the text on.
You're not gonna, it's not gonna [00:19:00] include the sound, but you can add that on Tik TOK, and you can add the native fonts on TedTalk. But that will probably be a third of the videos you do that come from your reels. You want to use videos to share testimonials. You want to use videos to share your thoughts.
You want to use videos to talk about things that happening in your industry. And these are all very quick one. So it's quite a lot of it is very active. And if you're trying to do trends with your business, then you've got to have a video mindset where you're ready to make a video today. So you want to have your tripod set up.
You need to know. Where the light looks good on your face, just so you can get on and talk and just know how to move around the Tik TOK app. So you can bang something out quickly. And it, and it does that does sound exhausting and tiring, but actually it's just a habit that you get in and it's actually very easy.
And the the benefits are huge. So if you, a lot of people say to me, Yeah.
but I'm doing, I'm doing Instagram. I think on Instagram, you've got to do so much stuff to appear every day. You know, if you're posting three stories on [00:20:00] Instagram a day and a couple of whales a week, that's a lot of content already.
You don't have to go and look for new content. Just Repubs that a little bit and do it on Tik TOK.
Sophie: Okay, brilliant. So could you make a video on tech talk and then pull it through to Instagram and use it on reels? Or is that
Penny: Yeah. Yeah, you can. Yeah, you absolutely can. You've got to try not.
to do that with the watermark. A lot of big brands do it with automobile, not brands, but famous people do with the watermark and daycare and have absolutely amazing results. There are some tricks for doing it without the watermark. So there's snap tick, and some other apps where you can just download without the watermark.
It does keep a little bit of data in it. So sometimes I would upload a video, just run it through something like shot first, save it from. In high definition, just say it doesn't bring all that Tik TOK data with it, or real data all the way around and then post it. Yeah. Go for it. Different.
Sophie: Okay, brilliant. So if you're already in the habit of making reels on Instagram, then this shouldn't really, you can still use them and then add a few [00:21:00] bits, like the equivalent of stories or like, yeah. Perfect. I think that sounds really doable. And I think as well, a lot of the time I've had a lot of conversations recently with businesses where they feel.
It kind of head of a plateau with Instagram. And it's just really hard to get in front of new people and they actually often come to me and say, right, I think I need to do ads. Cause I'm not getting in front of new people. And sometimes they're right. And sometimes I think actually you're not quite ready for ads yet, but you do you're right.
You do need to get in front of more
Penny: I think.
Sophie: to test the product and you need to test your website and see what your conversion rates are and build your email list. But how do you do that without using ads? So it feels like this could be a really good option.
Penny: well, I think the Instagram is very difficult to do well now because they keep bringing in new things to do so , to use it as effectively as perhaps a business might need to is, is quite a lot of work. And I actually find just doing a few videos on Tinto. Less work and a lot more fun. What I would say for your, I mean, and obviously you can do [00:22:00] Tech-Talk ads.
I would say you'll probably hate this as a Facebook marketer. On your search to a thousand followers to do some promoted post. You know, there's some videos where you're showing some really good information because of the audio or trending sounds. You might not be able to use an a promotion.
So maybe just go with your voice, do a talking head, share your, hurt, your insight, and then your call to action. What do you want people to do? Which could be leave a comment. Look at my link in bio, whatever it is. And then give it a little promotion. I think I did that when I was coming up to a thousand followers.
I was so bored of just trying to get past this, this line. And I think it cost me 20 quid. You have to buy two top coins to do it. And for a couple of days, Great. Just got me over the line. I was chuffed. It's a bit of instant gratification though. There's not a particularly good audience definition.
It's very top level, but it's improving, but you know what, every now and then.
Sophie: No. Do you know? I mean, generally I would say stay away from the boost button. If [00:23:00] you are looking for sales, for, you know, specific action, but the boost button can be incredible for growing your following, getting in front of more people like getting engagement, like, and just kind of keeping your account.
I'm talking mostly Instagram here, but I imagine on technical as well, like you say, bringing more people into your world rather than just relying on organic.
Penny: Absolutely. It has to be covered before when you get to 1,004 of us, for example, then you're able to go live. Now, if that's something you're comfortable with, or perhaps you're doing it already on Instagram, pushes people to your life, they want people to be live. And so you're going to grow your followers further.
So just getting over that mark means you're. Now, if you've got to create your account, you're going to be able to link up your website or add your link tree, and you're going to be able to go live. So just a little promotion here and that doesn't
Sophie: nudge it up. Absolutely. Okay, brilliant. So I guess we've covered a bit about where you start. So open up an account and, you know follow your niche and kind of really train the [00:24:00] algorithm, have a look at what's working, have a look at like length of video, types of video, that sort of thing. Are there any accounts that you direct people to, or anyone in particular, obviously other than you to follow or, you know, to kind of get advice as well?
I guess
Penny: Yeah, So I think in terms of, not in the mother and baby wealth, but broadly take top, I would fall, I wave wild and that's wave like ocean wave wild, w Y L D O. Then if you can put that in the notes. And I would, and I would do that because she was the original queen of trends and she is great at delivering, you know, just up-to-date it talk information.
She talks to tech talk. She's got her eye on the trends all the time, so that's a really nice place to start. And sometimes she'll explain how to do them. The other one is the mothership smelt spelt with a year rather than the ma mothership. And she is, I'd say, I think. You know, she's definitely in the 50 plus category, but a great teacher takes loads of [00:25:00] time to really explain how to do something complicated trends and just talks a lot.
She does a lot of lives with loads of really good information. So I definitely go along, listen to people's lives and see what you can learn. Jera bean, J E R a bean she's. You see her a lot on Instagram as well. She's quite fun. And always got loads of ideas. She does lots of transitions and all those little things that are just going to keep eyes on your feet.
Sophie: Yeah.
Penny: And then of course, in terms of the sort of mom and baby world, that there's some hilarious sort of trends going round on tech talk that, well, I don't even know if they're trends, they're there all the time. Like the older child, middle child, younger child, all of those. And you can just let the days on the discovery page.
They're very funny. There's somebody called Abby, Herbert ABB. I E. And she's got, I think she was a model or something America, and she's got a, a baby called pier, but she she's really good at pairing trends with the whole motherhood baby thing. So definitely want to watch to see how she puts videos together.
And obviously she, it was of [00:26:00] confidence for dancing, but you don't have to do that. There's another one called a Feener Ashley Bates. And I had, I just came across her today through the discovery pages. She's making some brings. Really sort of funny parent and child videos. And I think that if you've got parent and child products, you could see how easily you could just place those in videos and make something similar.
And then of course, mum was still gossip. Is she on your radar?
Sophie: Oh, my gosh. Yes. Is this you're on everyone's radar.
Penny: She's must be on your radar. And she's, she's doing just as good a job on Tik TOK as she is on Instagram. She's really ready.
Sophie: Brilliant. Oh, that's so helpful. I always think it's useful just to get you started. Isn't it seeing what other people do and some examples of really good videos too, like for inspiration as well. Brilliant. And, okay, last question. Before I talk about how Facebook ads can link in with your tech talk strategy, is, are there any common mistakes that you see that people should try and.
Penny: Yeah, but I say, I'd say [00:27:00] the one thing that most people, more than a mistake underestimate on Tik TOK is how important the comments are. So there's a whole party and the comments on Tik TOK and people can ask you comments and you can reply with a video. So that's a really nice part of strategy as well.
But most of all, Be the first person to comment on your own posts. You want to start those conversations. You want people to comment and you'll see that as you grow, this begins to happen more and more people can have conversations only in your comments. They've got nothing to do with you, but just things happen in there.
It's funny. Like you should always read to, to comments. They notice stuff about your videos. You know, they'll see things in the background, you know, just such an eye for everything. It's, it's fun. And also while people are commenting, the ticker on your video is going, so it's actually pushing up your views. So you want to have as much engagement in the comments as possible. And you do that by starting with your own comment That would be, I think it's
Sophie: comment on your own video?
Penny: Yeah. And often, because there's not much space for the capture and I might just carry on seeing a bit more.
Sophie: I [00:28:00] say, okay.
Penny: But I'd always find something to say, oh, we know the usual, good old ask a question or something,
Sophie: Yeah.
Penny: just, I just get it going a bit.
Definitely because that's people don't realize that that's very different Instagram.
Sophie: Okay. Yeah, that is really a different Instagram actually. That's a great thing to keep an eye out for. Fantastic. Okay. So in terms of linking it through to Facebook ads, I think the big thing here really is the link through to Instagram is that all the time, right from when you begin. So you can always push people through to your Instagram.
And as I talk about a lot, you know, we, the more people are engaged and following on Instagram, the more we can build that. Target them with ads later on, which is going to be cheaper for you. And generally I think as well, Tik TOK is going to be really good for sending people to your website when you do get that link and growing your email list as well.
So you've got that one link where you can have your link trees, so you can have your website, have your email address, and the more you grow, your warm audience, get people on your website, get people on your email list. You can nurture them and build those warm audiences so that [00:29:00] when you are ready to sell and.
Oh, peak times of year, you've got that warm audience there to sell to. So that is how I would link it back to Facebook ads. That has been so useful penny, and there's been so many different things that I think people will find really helpful. I mean, you know what? It's like, you can listen to all of this amazing free help and then feel a bit overwhelmed and kind of think, oh, I'm definitely gonna do that.
And then do nothing. Is there one thing that you would say to people to do today just to kind of kickstart their talk.
Penny: Yeah.
I definitely would. So I'd say the first thing, if you don't have a Ted talk account, just go and open one. Even if you're not intending to post straight away, give it your business name before someone else does and just have that game and just get used to scrolling and seeing what is in your niche, because.
You're not going to see what your niece is there until you've scrolled a bit. What else other people are doing. So I sometimes have clients here, actually. There's not anyone doing a great job. So go in there. It's an under saturated market. Take your little chunk because I think by the end of this year, people are going to be all [00:30:00] over the Tik TOK.
Sophie: Yeah. So kind of get in there adding like the garlic glory days
Penny: You know? Yeah.
Sophie: it was like, yeah,
Penny: There's still space. There's still space and time. So definitely.
Sophie: Brilliant. Thank you so much. So if you've loved listening to all of Penny's tips and advice and want to hear more, the best way to do that on surprisingly is to connect on Tik TOK or on Instagram. And it's at bar bruiser apps underscore social. I will put obviously those links in the show notes, and there's also a fantastic newsletters to sign up to which again, I will put the link to in the show notes.
So thank you so much for joining us. My name.
Penny: That's the pleasure. I love talking to talk.
Sophie: Lovely. Thanks so much.
Thank you so much for joining me this week before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you ever enjoyed these podcast episodes, I'd really love to ask you to leave a review in apple podcasts reviews are one of the major ways that apple ranks their podcasts, [00:31:00] and it only takes a few seconds, but really does make a massive difference to new people.
Finding me. Thank you again for joining me, Sophie, in this episode of growing pains, see you next time.
