Lisa Larter (00:01):
Welcome to, She Talks Business. If you’re an entrepreneur, business owner or aspiring mogul, chances are you want to learn more about marketing and mastering and monetizing your business. She Talks Business is where you’ll learn all of that and more. My name is Lisa Larter and I’m an entrepreneur, high school dropout, wiener dog enthusiast and your host. Let’s get started.

Adan Kovinich (00:24):
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of She Talks Business. Cass and I are having such a blast sharing our insights with you, and we’re just not ready to give the mic back to Lisa. Recently I said to her, “Can we have it for a couple more episodes?” And she told me to get my own podcast. I think we’re just going to be here for a little bit longer while we hold onto the podcast for as long as possible.

Cass Bald (00:52):
Adan, I think this might be a sign that we should in fact start our own marketing podcast. I think we could do it.

Adan Kovinich (00:59):
Yeah, me too. I think we could do Zillennial insights into marketing. It’s something that everyone should look out for. You never know when Cass and I might pop up and do a podcast.

Cass Bald (01:12):
This week we want to talk about something that we have been hearing business owners moan and groan about for a few years now. It’s something that I love, and it’s something that I know Adan loves, and it is TikTok. Today the topic is, should you be on TikTok and should you be using TikTok for your business?

Adan Kovinich (01:35):
I love this topic because a lot of people think that TikTok is for a certain demographic, like the late millennial, gen Z crowd, but I really don’t see it that way. And more and more people are being open about being on TikTok, even like there seems to be some embarrassment stigma for an older generation to be on TikTok. But I think that’s really changing.

Cass Bald (02:00):
Yeah, absolutely. I have to agree. Although I know that there is a lot of the TikTok dances and it’s a lot of the teenagers, truthfully, I’m a frequent TikTok user and I find so much value in it. When I’m scrolling through my feed, the algorithm is so powerful and so spot on that I don’t actually see the TikTok dances. TikTok doesn’t show me that because that is not the content that I have shown to be interested in.

Cass Bald (02:31):
Instead, my feed is filled with some really valuable marketing insights, because that’s what I usually interact with. It’s a lot of dog videos because, let’s be real, I love dogs, as I’m sure most people do. The truth is TikTok has value for anyone. It’s not just about the dancing or funny videos.

Adan Kovinich (02:58):
I don’t know if you know this about TikTok. This is like a little fun fact, but TikTok originally in China was used as… It wasn’t called TikTok, and I can’t remember what it was called, but originally it was a news platform and they learned an algorithm by having people read content and created this algorithm that would show people incredible content that was what they were interested in. Over time, they used this learning, this AI learning, to be able to create a more advanced and sophisticated algorithm that’s unlike anything else.

Adan Kovinich (03:36):
They took all of that knowledge that they learned and I think it goes all the way back to 2014 when they started that app with news. And they took that and they applied it to TikTok and it’s crazy. I don’t see dancing videos ever. And in fact, I don’t think I see anyone below the age of 25 on TikTok in my feed.

Cass Bald (03:55):
That’s so interesting. I didn’t know that about how they created the algorithm, but that’s really cool. To summarize what we’ve been hearing from business owners over the past few years, it’s mostly that they don’t really understand the platform or what it’s all about or what it does. They think that it’s only for teenage people. A lot of people just don’t know how to work the app. And like, I get it. Technology is super confusing. And even I have found of all the platforms, TikTok has probably been the biggest learning curve for me to learn.

Cass Bald (04:32):
I find that social media comes fairly naturally to me, so that’s very fair. And then the thing that I hear probably the most is that people think it’s just a flashy new trend and it’s not something to waste time on. I think I’ve heard Lisa say before, don’t go chasing after the trendy social media squirrels. I think a lot of people view it as something that is going to be a fad and something that passes.

Cass Bald (05:04):
But although it’s true that that does happen to social media platforms and they come and go, I really do think TikTok is here to stay and it’s time to start considering how it can move your business forward because there are ways that it can help you grow. We’re going to dive into that a little bit more here.

Adan Kovinich (05:28):
And going back to your coming and going with apps, if you look at Clubhouse, Clubhouse was so fast. It came in really hard, really fast. And then does anyone even talk about Clubhouse anymore? What they did is so intelligent with having people sign up exclusively, but then they lost it. They had it in their hands, but they lost it. Vine is the ancestor of TikTok, the seven second videos, but that also died out pretty quickly. However, a lot of famous people came out of Vine in their seven second videos.

Adan Kovinich (06:04):
People we don’t even remember were on Vine are now famous YouTube celebrities. Some of them have the biggest following on YouTube, but that was only maybe a two-year stint with Vine. Nothing is like TikTok because it is so addictive because of the algorithm. TikTok knows who you are so well that you can scroll it at any time of day and it’s almost like it knows what you’re thinking. It can be different in the morning than it is in the afternoon, and no two people will have the same for you page.

Cass Bald (06:35):
Absolutely. Clubhouse and Vine are only two examples of social media platforms that have come and left just as quickly. But TikTok has been here for quite a while now, and we’ve been seeing it over and over and over again that it’s making a difference in people’s lives and businesses. It’s time to be strategic in terms of thinking about where your ideal client actually hangs out and not to overlook the power that some of these platforms can actually have.
Adan Kovinich (07:09):
I think in your point in saying that, going back to the embarrassment thing that I brought up earlier, people may not say that they’re on TikTok, but 100% they are. I look at my sister, she’s 35, business owner. She’s on TikTok. She sends me them daily. And then I look at my cousin. He is a geneticist and he’s on TikTok and his whole TikTok for you page is just science, which is completely different from mine. He’s in his early forties. People may not say, “Hey, I’m on TikTok,” but they definitely are.

Cass Bald (07:43):
Adan, I’ve heard you say this a few times before, but you say people are sleeping on TikTok. I’ve heard you say those exact words multiple times. What do you mean by that exactly?

Adan Kovinich (07:58):
Yeah. I think that’s like my term that I yell more often than I probably should is that people are sleeping on TikTok. It’s this idea that people are avoiding using it or they don’t think it’s right for them without exploring it, and they’re just saying, “Oh, this isn’t right for me. My client is not on there. My demographic isn’t on there. I shouldn’t be on there.” They’re just letting it go and not thinking deeper about it and not thinking strategically about it and not thinking of ways that they can maybe be the first of their type of content on TikTok to maybe create their own trend.

Adan Kovinich (08:36):
People are just avoiding it and sleeping on it instead of acting on it and thinking about it. Instead, they’re just avoiding it. It’s such a shame to see some people doing that because their audience is there. They just don’t know it yet. It takes coming onto the app and spending time scrolling in your niche and getting to know what content is on there and how can you take your own content, maybe it’s a YouTube video, maybe it’s something you already have, and using that to follow a trend or get on top of a trend in your own niche.

Adan Kovinich (09:17):
I think about one of our clients, and Cass was working on a TikTok for her, and we were chatting about what are the ways that we can do this. Cass said, “Check it out. I’m doing it in the style of Elyse Myers.” Elyse Myers is a mom who just talks about regular life and things that people going through. She talks about her own embarrassing stories. It just makes everyone feel better about their own anxieties. She blew up almost overnight, but she has a very distinct style of content. She does it differently than every other TikToker.

Adan Kovinich (09:48):
I can’t believe I just used that word. Every other person on TikTok. When Cass said that to me, I can picture in my head what that video’s going to look like. It just takes as simple as you having a really great concept, a really great idea, and putting it out on TikTok, people picking it up and doing it. And just because the people that are picking it up and doing it aren’t maybe in your niche doesn’t mean that they won’t have someone on there for you page that is in the niche.

Adan Kovinich (10:15):
There’s just is so many people on TikTok. That’s why I always say and yell it from the rooftops, you are sleeping on TikTok.

Cass Bald (10:24):
Just to illustrate our point even more and to really dig into the questions that business owners do have, we took the liberty of reaching out to some of the business owners in our network and asking them what their biggest questions about the platform are, what is it that’s holding them back, why haven’t they started using it, why do they want to use it, or what do they wish they knew about it. What you’re about to hear are six questions from real business owner and what they want to know about TikTok.

Adan Kovinich (11:00):
Yeah. We had this idea to put it out in Lisa’s Strategy Lab, because there are so many business owners in there and they’re often talking about social media platforms, and Lisa does learning labs on different platforms. We thought it’d be a good idea to just put it out there, to see who’s thinking about TikTok or if they had any questions. I don’t think that it ends here with just those questions. You can always reach out to us or even reach out to Lisa and say, “Hey, I have a question for Adan and Cass,” and we’re happy to answer it as well.

Adan Kovinich (11:31):
I’m going to start with the first question. “I have made a couple of TikToks, and I would say the platform is difficult to use. I always have freezing issues or it won’t load and then sits there and kicks me off. And then I have to start over again.” I’m going to just give one quick tip for this that’s a technology tip, because fun fact, I’m a bit of a tech nerd. This could be the iOS, which is the iPhone software that’s installed on your phone, that could be causing this. I know at the beginning of any new update, there’s always some bugs that kick people off of apps.

Adan Kovinich (12:10):
I’ve been kicked off of Facebook and TikTok more times than I’d like to admit right now because of the iOS bugs. The next thing that I’m going to say is that uninstall the app and reinstall it. Those are my quick tips.

Cass Bald (12:23):
And then in terms of actually using the app, I have a few tips as well. My first bit of advice is to actually record your content outside of the app. It doesn’t have to be done inside TikTok. You can record it on just your regular phone camera, have it in your camera roll, and then upload to TikTok from there. You can upload multiple clips. You can edit them in the app to piece them together. And that way, even if you were to be kicked out of the app, you’re not losing what you’ve already recorded because you’ll always have it in your camera roll. My second tip is once you are editing in the app, treat it like you’re working on anything on your computer, save often. There is a capability to save your video that you are working on as a draft, and then go back in and work on it.

Cass Bald (13:12):
The next question is, “My target audience are people in leadership roles in the corporate world. Is this demographic on TikTok? Wouldn’t LinkedIn be a better platform for the B2B market?” To this, I say there are more people who work in the corporate world on TikTok than you think. It is, of course, recommended to think about the platform that is most optimal for your ideal audience, but it doesn’t necessarily mean overlook every other platform. Yes, if you are speaking to people in leadership roles in the corporate world, LinkedIn is the place for you. I would argue that until I’m blue in the face. But I would also argue that showing up on TikTok might give you a new angle that you didn’t previously think about. It might give you new clients that you hadn’t previously spoken to before. It might actually reach clients who are your ideal clients who just haven’t connected with you on LinkedIn or haven’t come across your content. There are people of all walks of life on TikTok. There are people in corporate jobs on TikTok.
Adan Kovinich (14:22):
Even looking at Cassy. Cassy is the chief of everything. She has many, many, many, many people under her, and she spends time in her downtime on TikTok. This is the big point, where does your client spend the downtime, which maybe they scroll LinkedIn in the morning, but at night when they’re chilling out with just laying on the couch or right before bed sometimes, people are scrolling TikTok. And not everyone, but that’s the time period or the timeframe when maybe they’d be doing it.

Adan Kovinich (14:57):
Cassy sends us TikToks, sometimes I get them at like 7:00 PM in my email, “Hey, check out this TikTok that I just came across,” and it’s something in our industry in marketing. Sometimes it’s how to use an Excel document, which is always super cool. Sometimes it’s how to be a better leader, how do you grow in your leadership role, and how to effectively get everyone on board when it’s maybe something that somebody doesn’t want to do. All of those things come through on TikTok. She sends me the most valuable content through there.

Adan Kovinich (15:31):
When you look at is my demographic on there and is LinkedIn better, sure, LinkedIn is the best platform for you. Is it better? I don’t know if it’s better, but I think it’s the best platform for you. I don’t think that it’s better than TikTok.
Cass Bald (15:48):
You know what, Adan? Something just popped into my head and I had never thought about this before until just now. It is this. Maybe your ideal client is not yet on TikTok. Maybe not a lot of people who do what you do are on TikTok yet, but there is so much value in being the first and getting your foot in the door.

Cass Bald (16:13):
Sometimes if you start creating content that is different from everyone else and you’re kind of being a disrupter, maybe you are the one that is going to set a precedent, or you are going to be the one that I don’t want to say goes viral, but there is so much value in being different than everyone else. Maybe people in leadership roles in the corporate world are really tired of LinkedIn posts.

Cass Bald (16:45):
Maybe what they want is a short relatable video that is going to give them actual information that they can use. If you are the person, the only one that is on TikTok and doing that, what an opportunity. Like what an opportunity. I know that’s not going to work for everyone. That’s not going to work for everyone. Some of you might be listening to me being like, “Cass, you’re insane. You’re crazy. No, I’m not going to do that.” But some of you might be thinking, “Wow! She might be onto something there. She might be.”

Adan Kovinich (17:20):
You are onto something. That is so true, but just the like what an opportunity, it is.

Cass Bald (17:27):
I want you to know that everything you just heard me say, that was the first. You just went through that thought process with me. That wasn’t perfectly curated. I didn’t communicate that as eloquently as I probably could have, because you just experienced me have that little epiphany moment. But wow! What an opportunity. Be the first.

Adan Kovinich (17:51):
It goes back to me talking about the Elyse Myers. She was the first to really create content the way she does. What opportunity. She has overnight three million followers. Her life has changed, right? It’s just being that first person. To answer the question, to go back and actually answer it, wouldn’t LinkedIn be a better platform for the B2B market? Maybe. But until you’re on TikTok trying to find it out, find out if your audience is there and if people are going to engage with you and if the right people are there, I wouldn’t say it’s better.

Cass Bald (18:28):
Yeah. I say it might be the most appropriate platform for you, but it’s not the only platform for you. Diversifying is always good advice. I don’t know any example of when just sticking to one platform forever and never expanding beyond that is… I would never give that advice to anyone.

Adan Kovinich (18:55):
Our next question is, “what’s the value in using TikTok versus just posting a video directly to Instagram.” Instagram has the Reels, which is a shorter version of TikTok. They only allow 30 seconds and TikTok offers up to three minutes. But the big benefit on being on TikTok is that you’re posting to where people are actually looking for that content. When I go on Instagram, I’m looking for photos, maybe the odd video, but I’m not looking for the nine by 16 video that I get on TikTok. When I come across a Reel and I get in that like Reel feed, I instantly close Instagram and open TikTok because that is now the content I want to consume, and arguably TikTok has much better content because of its algorithm.

Cass Bald (19:47):
I have to agree. I find the quality of the content on TikTok to be way better than Reels, and I do think it’s because I’m receiving very targeted videos on TikTok versus on Instagram Reels. I also do want to just point out that we just made a comment about the length of Reels versus TikToks. And in the interest of making this episode evergreen, that is probably going to change in like a week or in a month or in three months. Things like that are constantly evolving.

Cass Bald (20:28):
Although that’s the difference between TikTok and Reels right now and everything that we’re saying about TikTok and Reels today is accurate at the moment, that can change in an instant. For example, do you remember, Adan, when Snapchat Stories was the big thing. And today, I don’t know very many people who are on Snapchat Stories because Instagram came out with its own version and it came out with Instagram Stories. When Instagram Stories first launched, we all looked at it like, “This is dumb. We’re not going to use this.”
Cass Bald (21:07):
And today, Instagram Stories have overtaken Snapchat Stories, and that could very well happen between Reels and TikToks. We don’t know. We don’t know where it’s going. But as of right now, TikToks and Reels are very different, and TikToks do seem to be a higher quality of content.

Adan Kovinich (21:30):
If you want to ensure you’re going to your target audience, TikTok is the place because I don’t think a social media platform, unless it comes from the same company, will be able to match this algorithm. It’s scary intelligent.

Cass Bald (21:46):
I did also learn that using your exact TikTok video and uploading it to Instagram will actually punish you in the Instagram algorithm. Do you know why that is?

Adan Kovinich (22:01):
Okay. I don’t know if this is fact. This is my hypothesis on TikTok and Reels. When you post your TikTok, you get a downloaded version of it that has the TikTok watermark. When you upload that same video to Instagram, I think there’s code within the photo or the video itself that notifies Instagram or Instagram has like intelligence into knowing that video was recently posted on TikTok, so we’re not going to promote TikTok with the watermark.

Adan Kovinich (22:35):
But this is, again, speculation on what I’m thinking and why if you remove the watermark, it does better, or if you upload two of the exact same videos at the exact same time, you won’t be as punished by Instagram as you would if you uploaded the one with the watermark. But that’s just my view on it. I’m sure there is somebody that’s done a deep dive into why that is, but that’s my thought process on it. Why do you think it’s like that, Cass?

Cass Bald (23:01):
I have to agree that Instagram just doesn’t want to be promoting TikTok, and the watermark is the TikTok logo and plays a huge role in that. Our next question is, “I’m starting to hear the term social selling mentioned more and more. I’m wondering how this ties into TikTok.”

Adan Kovinich (23:18):
Okay. Social selling is the idea that you’re selling directly to your customer by a social platform. If I am selling a candle, I would go on TikTok, talk about my candle, how great my candle is. If you wanted to purchase it, link in bio. That is like the bare-bones of it. I think that the businesses that do really well with social selling is multi-level marketing companies because they use social selling as the only way to buy the product. They use it in a really great way.

Adan Kovinich (23:52):
I think if you take all the good parts of a multi-level marketing company and look at how they’re socially selling, it is a really great way to do it if you have your own product. If you’re on TikTok and you reach a thousand followers, then you can go live. And if you’re talking about a product or a service that you offer, you can do that through a live video, and even just posting to talk about the product and saying things like, “Link in bio.” Social selling works best when I can see somebody’s face.

Adan Kovinich (24:27):
If I can hear you talk about the product and I hear genuine love for a product, I am much more willing to trust you than I am to trust a social post that’s just a graphic. I think that TikTok ties in so nicely into social selling, because I can instantly know, like, and trust you, which are the three components of selling a service or product online. I can do that right away just by watching a video of you. I think it speeds up that social selling process.

Adan Kovinich (25:00):
Question number five is, “I’ve chosen my social media outlets, and I am sticking with them to build my audience. I feel like one more would be too much for me to handle right now, and I can’t keep up with my current social media schedule, so I’m not sure adding TikTok would be a great idea for me right now.”

Cass Bald (25:19):
So to this I have to say, know your priorities and it is a good idea to start in one place and do something well before you are ready to expand and move on. And if that is all you have the bandwidth to handle in the moment, that is okay. That’s totally okay. But you don’t necessarily have to count TikTok out. Eventually when you are ready to take on another social platform, maybe TikTok will be right for you in that moment.
Adan Kovinich (25:50):
Yeah. I think that when you start choosing social media outlets, don’t overwhelm yourself with seven platforms. Start with the core. You want to start with your Instagram, your LinkedIn and Facebook. Just start with the three core. Those are going to be your safe places to go, because we know for sure that your audience is probably there. Once you’ve mastered those and…

Adan Kovinich (26:16):
Over time doing those platforms are going to take you less time, so you’re not going to feel like these three platforms are too much for me to handle because you’ve been doing it for so long. Eventually what’ll happen is you’ll gain 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there. You’ll start to say, “Okay, well, now I’m ready to branch out.” So now your choices come to Twitter, then you have TikTok. Maybe you want to try a different part of a platform. Maybe you want to do Facebook groups, or you want to do Instagram Reels.

Adan Kovinich (26:47):
Those are just things that’ll start to happen naturally. When you first start out, you don’t want to jump into every platform and every little feature that comes with every part of a social media platform.

Cass Bald (26:59):
Yeah. Trying to do too much is going to result in you doing nothing at all or feeling like you can’t do anything well. And then I do also want to just pull out one little bit of that question about, “I’m sticking with the ones I have to build my audience” because I’ve been noticing a trend between TikTok and Instagram lately that I think is really innovative and a little ingenious of the creators on TikTok. And essentially what they’re doing is they are creating content on TikTok, but that content is driving them to Instagram.

Cass Bald (27:40):
The content on TikTok will almost leave them off on a cliffhanger. And to get that next bit, to get the juicy part, they have to go to Instagram. Or something similar that they’ll do is they will give you the meat on TikTok, but then they will say, “There’s a little something extra on Instagram.” Although the platforms are in a sense competing, users have found a way to actually have them benefit each other by requiring people on Instagram to go to TikTok for certain things and requiring people on TikTok to go to Instagram for other things.
Adan Kovinich (28:25):
So cool that you said that. I instantly thought of TikToks that have done that, nothing in particular, but it’s so interesting that you say that. I never thought of how genius that is for people to move their audience from one platform to another, because that’s one of our biggest hurdles as marketers is, how do we move an audience from one place to another? I always find moving Instagram to Facebook is so challenging, but moving Facebook to Instagram is easy. Thinking of that and how can you apply that to other platforms as well.

Cass Bald (28:59):
I also have a tip for managing multiple social platforms as, especially because it can be so time consuming. And as a business owner, you might not necessarily have the resources to hire an agency, hire a freelancer, or have somebody on your team do it for you. As a small business owner, you’re often doing a lot of the heavy lifting yourself, and I recognize that. Something that we say at the Lisa Larter Group is don’t waste your leftovers. Lisa presented this idea to us with a story about a turkey dinner.
Cass Bald (29:35):
You might have heard it before, because I know she’s written about it in one of her blogs, but essentially it’s about making a turkey dinner. After Thanksgiving, you don’t just throw all of the leftovers in the trash. Because in the coming week, you’re going to want to have turkey sandwiches. You’re going to want to have turkey on salads. You can make casserole with your Thanksgiving leftovers and the stuffing and the cranberry sauce. There’s like a million recipes that you can make with your Thanksgiving leftovers.

Cass Bald (30:13):
And you should be treating your content the same way. Don’t film a video for a webinar and use it one time and then never look at it again. Don’t write a blog post and then post it on your website and never revisit it again. There is endless content that you can be pulling from each of those single pieces of content. So to be more specific, say you record a video for your YouTube channel and it’s a five-minute video. And in that five-minute video you give your five tips for productivity, or something along those lines, right?

Cass Bald (30:52):
You give five tips. That is five separate TikToks that you could make that are all 30 seconds long. You could post that whole video as one long three-minute TikTok. You could post a clip that has just those three tips in it. You could post just a clip of you giving the explanation and then drive people to your YouTube channel. You can repurpose that one video clip that you made in so many different formats on your… And that doesn’t just apply to TikTok. You could do that on Facebook.

Cass Bald (31:24):
That’s five different posts for each of those five tips, or that’s one long-form post for all five of those tips, or that’s one teaser post that’s then going to drive people to your YouTube. You can upload that YouTube, natively to Facebook, or you could link it back to your YouTube channel, right? There’s a million different ways that you can do it. I will also just mention, don’t post all of those pieces of content super close together. You could spread that out over the span of six months. And that way people aren’t going to get bored of your content.
But that’s just one example of how you can be repurposing to save yourself time, because your time is so valuable as a business owner.

Adan Kovinich (32:06):
I think another way you can do that is if you have one video, you can also create just a text post. You can create a graphic to go with it, so you have a graphic post. You can make a swipeable. You can make a blog post on it from just the transcript and just organizing it a little bit better to be in a blog post. You can use it as an ad. You can use it so many different ways on top of it just being a video. What you’ve said in that video can be repurposed hundreds and hundreds of times. And like Cass said, you don’t want to post that in one week, but over time you’ll have a curated content enough for you to be able to build it out in different ways.

Cass Bald (32:49):
And that’s actually one of my favorite things that our team does for our clients is we do content plans and content mapping like that and help them repurpose their content in those ways.

Adan Kovinich (33:02):
I also am curious because this is the second little story that you’ve told from Lisa, both have to do with food.

Cass Bald (33:10):
Both have to do with cooking meat. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. You’ll have to follow up with her on that one.

Adan Kovinich (33:18):
I’m wondering if it has something to do that she’s hungry and that’s when her best ideas come out, or if she just really loves turkey and ham dinners.

Cass Bald (33:26):
Lisa is actually a really good cook. I know she is. Actually it’s funny again that you say this because today in The Strategy Lab on a call, she used an example of unrelated blog posts that she could do about making Thai curry. She was talking about how she makes the best Thai curry. I don’t know. I don’t know. She must just be very hungry or something.

Adan Kovinich (33:48):
I think her best ideas come out when she’s hungry, so she remains hungry so that she can create content for us.
Cass Bald (33:56):
The very last question is just high level, the question we hear the most often, and it is, “how do I know if TikTok is right for me?”

Adan Kovinich (34:07):
Get on TikTok immediately. I think everyone that listens to this episode, just for fun, download TikTok and look up one topic that you’re really interested in. It doesn’t have to be related to work. If you love dogs, look up dogs. If you love cars, look up cars. Just look up anything that you like and just scroll through and see what’s happening, what is really valuable information, what are the kinds of TikToks that are out there. Then once you get a little bit comfortable looking through the content, now look up your niche.

Adan Kovinich (34:40):
It doesn’t have to be somebody that’s targeting your exact audience. Just find anything within your niche and see what content’s there. Then you can dive a little bit deeper. If you find one creator that’s creating exactly what you want to create, click on them and look through them and follow them and see what they’re doing. I think that’s the best way to find out if TikTok’s right for you.

Cass Bald (35:02):
I think a lot of people and business owners in particular feel that the point of social media is to generate leads, find the next client, make the next sale. It’s not always about profit, and it’s not always about revenue generation. Sometimes the best thing that social media can do for you is building awareness about your brand, and then that will indirectly lead to all of those things that are the end goal.

Cass Bald (35:38):
Obviously you’re in business to make a living and for financial freedom. When you’re thinking about TikTok, don’t necessarily think about whether or not it is going to give you your next lead. Just think about how it can help you generate awareness for your brand and for your business.

Adan Kovinich (35:58):
And especially because business owners want to be thought leaders. We say that 80% of your content should be thought leadership and information that’s going to foster a relationship with your audience, and then 20% is going to be promotional. I think that the goal of social media shouldn’t 100% of the time be to sell something and get a sale. It really should be creating a relationship with people so they know who you are. So that when something comes up that they need you, you’re top of mind.

Adan Kovinich (36:31):
I think that’s an important aspect of social media. Just to wrap us up and bring it all back together, because we gave so much information and so much insight on TikTok, I want us to give out our one tip, the one thing that people can walk away from this episode and think about. I’ll start us off. When you think about your audience and wondering, “Are they even on TikTok and should I be posting there? Am I going to be out just to teens?

Adan Kovinich (36:59):
And for B2B, this may not be the right market, or even for my product, this might not be the right market,” if you think your audience isn’t there, I really truly believe they are, and they are just holding back on saying it. Maybe they’re not posting and a lot of the time they’re not, but they are scrolling. It may surprise you how many people are on TikTok that you would never imagine.

Adan Kovinich (37:28):
I think one takeaway from this looking at your audience is talk to your friends, talk to people in your community, in your circle, in your immediate circle, and ask, “Are you using TikTok for personal? Have you been on TikTok yet?” And just find out who’s there. People will be more honest if you’re close with them than maybe if you walked up to a stranger and asked or asked one of your clients if they’re on TikTok. But asking that personal circle in your age group to see is going to be a really great way to find out just how many people are on TikTok.

Cass Bald (38:04):
There are two final things that I want to say. The first is that as a business owner, if you plan on being in business for another five years, another 10 years, another 15 years, you also should be thinking about who your future clients are going to be. 15 years from now, not even 15, 10 years, five years from now, the people that are on TikTok right now are going to be your ideal clients, right? The people who are on TikTok right now might be a little bit younger than your ideal demographic, but getting your foot in the door with them early is never a bad idea.

Cass Bald (38:41):
And then lastly, I just want to reiterate that there is value in being the first. There is value in being a disrupter in your market. If no one else is doing it yet, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s because it shouldn’t be done, or because it’s not going to work. There’s only one way to find out and it’s by trying it, and something really magical can happen when you take that leap of faith and try new things.

Adan Kovinich (39:08):
I think I could just imagine all of these business owners listening to this episode running to TikTok, and I fully anticipate for everyone to come back to us and tell us that they tried TikTok and they’re in love with it and they want to use it every day.

Cass Bald (39:23):
Yeah. I really hope that you listen to everything that we’ve said here and give it a chance. I know we’re not going to convince everybody to go and start marketing their business on TikTok. I don’t expect that. And the truth is, maybe TikTok isn’t right for everyone. I do hope that some people have gotten something out of this and we can make a difference in their business.

Adan Kovinich (39:43):
All right. On that note, we are going to close out this episode with thanking everyone for letting us take over Lisa’s podcast. We know that this is not regular scheduled programming, and we appreciate all of the people that have said great things about the podcast and reached out to us, reached out to Lisa. We just want to thank everyone for listening to us because it can be a little bit different as a business owner that’s maybe been in the industry for 10, 20 years listening to 24 and 25 year olds talk about marketing.

Adan Kovinich (40:19):
We appreciate you being here. Next week, you will have a surprise. It will again be me and Cass, and we may have a few other people talking a little bit about our next topic. Come back next week and we will see you then.

Lisa Larter (40:38):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of She Talks Business. If you enjoyed the show, you know the drill, leave us a review, tell someone about it and join the conversation on social media. Thanks for listening and until next time remember, done is always better than perfect.