How TikTok Revolutionized Video Content and Marketing Strategies for Businesses

Andréa Jones (00:00):
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. TikTok literally changed the landscape of micro video content on social media, and today I want to talk about what the heck that means here now and today and why it matters to you, my friend, business owner, plus some little tidbits on how you can make some changes along the way. Let's get into it.

(00:19):
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(01:00):
Okay, so story time. I created my first video in 2007, 2007. I know I've talked about this before on the podcast, but it is so pivotal to understand that that was 15 ish years ago. At the time, it was very weird, okay, this was back in my YouTubing days, back in my YouTubing days, I had been watching creators like Philip DeFranco and Jenna Marbles, and I Justine, and was like, lemme give that a try. My friends and family thought it was very weird, very weird that I was posting videos of myself on the internet for who to watch exactly. And my first video was very awkward. If I was feeling brave, I would actually share some of it, but I'm not that brave today.

(01:54):
I wasn't even looking at the camera, I was just recording myself talking about nothing. I don't even remember the video's still out there. Y'all probably could find it if you dug real deep, but that was like three channels ago. I recorded the video, I posted it, and one of the things that I really loved about video is that I couldn't overthink it. Of course, I could overthink it, but there's a naturalness to talking that comes to me a little bit more organically than writing. I had been blogging at that point since 2004, so a couple years of blogging, and I was like, oh, blogging just takes so much time and energy and effort, and I'm not that great of a writer. It's just not my thing. Talking felt a little bit more natural and organic, and so I leaned into that Fast forward video has had such an impact on me.

(02:43):
Y'all know this, if you've been hanging out with me for a while now, I met my husband on YouTube. He was also a YouTuber at the time. We both since have totally changed direction and don't really believe in posting about all of our personal details online, but we basically filmed our entire travels during our honeymoon, which was a lot of fun, and I came from that background as a video person. So sitting here recording a podcast, it's a video podcast to me is the most natural and organic thing. It's how I communicate. However, I know a lot of people don't and they don't like the concept of video. So I want to talk today about why I triple down on video in recent years and why I think you should as well. And it all starts with the pandemic. That little panorama that we all went through in 2020.

(03:36):
Y'all remember two weeks to crush the curb more like two years here in Canada. Anyways, that moment in time in history was the catalyst for TikTok's rise in popularity. Okay, so hang out with me for a TikTok existed before March, 2020, however, it wasn't that popular. Let me actually look up a stat here. Prior to TikTok, it was called Musically. It was really more focused on music. It was kind of like a Vine competitor. And then in 2017, they rebranded to be called TikTok. Okay? So TikTok actually purchased musically and they rebranded. By the end of 2019, they had around 150, 200 million downloads, and then Q1 of 2020 shot up to over 318 million downloads. So almost double. I mean, don't check my math, it's not great, but there was a lot of interest in TikTok, okay? There was a lot of interest in TikTok. Anecdotally, raise your hand if you started watching TikTok. Because of the pandemic, I'm raising my hand.

(04:54):
I saw TikTok, rising popularity, but because of its association with music and lip-syncing and dancing, I wasn't interested. I even had logged onto the app prior to 2020 and was affronted because a video just started playing immediately and with sound, and I was like, oh, this is offensive. And I exited it and was like, I'll come back to you later. I know it's probably my job to study this, but it doesn't seem that important right now. That all changed during the pandemic. I suddenly had more time on my hands, and I was curious about the rise of this platform, and so I started studying TikTok. The TikTok effect is so important because it very drastically changed how every other platform approached video. So the first thing that TikTok did that no other platform has done before is have an in-app video editor, an in-app video editor.

(05:51):
This is huge because prior to TikTok, you had to edit your video somewhere else. You had to have another app. You had to go to Adobe or iMovie and create your video there, then upload it to social media. This was pretty standard across the board. TikTok said, okay, bet I'm going to make it easy for people to edit and create video right here within the app. And so anyone could go in, record a video, clip out little parts where you make a mistake. You could add filters, you could add text on the screen, you could add captions that wasn't possible before TikTok. That really changed not only how people could upload content, but how quickly they could create it, making it so much easier for anyone to create content. So this is the first piece of this puzzle, why TikTok is important, and it's hard to see sometimes because now when we go to something like Instagram reels or Facebook reels, we know that we can edit and record right within the app.

(06:53):
We know that we can do that. That was not a thing four years ago. Second thing TikTok changed was the way content is discovered. So content discovery, remember that story I told you where I opened the app and the video started playing, and I was like, what is happening? That is TikTok's algorithm, their content discovery algorithm. So previous to TikTok, if you started a Instagram account or a Facebook account, you would have to know who to follow, at the very least, some topics or celebrities to follow before the algorithm would start feeding you content. TikTok was like, you know what? We're just going to take our most popular content and just start showing it. And then based on how people interact, we will help them find new content. This was so different from how social media was previously done. So not only could you create content faster, you could discover content faster.

(07:49):
And then the third piece of this puzzle is that you could go viral faster. Okay? So again, prior to TikTok to go viral, you had to have a really solid fan base who were the initial engagers with that content, that fan base, your community had to share it out with other people, and then those people had to share it with other people, and that's how videos went viral. Pre TikTok, it was very hard to stumble upon something that you hadn't seen before and it already be viral. Usually virality happened because something was shared with you, very similar to those email chains, like early two thousands email chains where it was like a forwarded, forwarded, forwarded message that was like a meme. This is so old school, but that's how we would share memes. Back in the day, you had to know someone who would be the forwarder in your family.

(08:44):
This was my dad, and he would forward the memes. So whereas now with TikTok, you didn't really have to anyone else who saw that viral video. It doesn't have to be shared with you. TikTok just goes, you know what? Andréa seems to a lot of cooking videos. Perhaps she would like this cooking video, and no one in my family had to share it with me. They didn't have to know that I like cooking videos, TikTok's algorithm knew and shared it with me, and now I'm happily watching another cooking video. So this is how TikTok kind of changed the way we look at video. It's easy to create, it's easy to consume, and it's easy to discover new content. So we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, I'm going to talk about what this means for you as a business owner when we get back.

(09:42):
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(10:20):
We're back. So why should you care as a business owner? Well, those three things, consumability, discoverability, virality, virality, all impact. Now, what other social platforms are doing, and I call this little brother little sister syndrome, but Facebook meta, Instagram, that conglomerate was like, Hey, if TikTok can do it, I could do it too. And this is not new. They did this with Snapchat too. Snapchat is the reason we have Instagram stories, okay? Snapchat was a thing, rose in popularity. Instagram, Facebook was like, I could do stories. And now we have Instagram stories.

(10:59):
I could do content that disappears in 24 hours, no problem. So because of that, we now have Instagram stories. Well, August 5th, 2020 is when Instagram reels first became a thing. So this is not even six months after TikTok's rise in popularity. Instagram said, people are spending more time on TikTok than on Instagram. Let's just copy it and make our own thing and do it our own way. Okay? Then Facebook got reels, YouTube got shorts, Pinterest has video pins, and now vertical video placements are seen across the board. I mean, even LinkedIn came out with a recent update saying that, Hey, more people are on mobile, so feel free to post vertical video. So micro video, vertical video, it's a whole thing now, all because of TikTok and its rise in popularity. So as a business owner, if you want to capitalize on this, I think it's a great idea.

(12:00):
Consumer reports that 66% of people prefer to video over other types of social media content pieces. So more and more people prefer to watch video over other social media types of content. Now, I do think this is a little bit skewed data because they're including YouTube in here, and YouTube is like, YouTube now gets more streams and downloads than things like Netflix. So people watch a hell of a lot of video online. So video, the queen, the king, all of it. But what this means for you as a business owner is that you have a unique opportunity to be discovered, to have people consume your content and to go viral without having to have a large audience. I've had at least a dozen clients over the past four years since the rise of TikTok go viral. By viral, I mean over a million views on a video, over a million.

(12:57):
I've had dozens. More of my clients and students have explosive moments on social media because video, and even in recent history, one of my B-roll videos got over like 300 and something thousand views. Even though my community is very small, comparatively speaking, that's a huge win for me because it was a video and it was a B-roll video. So even better. And here's the thing. In order to really capture and create dynamic video on social media, you have to consider these four things, okay? Four things. The first thing is discoverability. When you go to create your video, you have to think in your head, this video is going out to people who do not follow me. Even if it is, is going out to your people. This content discovery piece, this new side of social media, means that there's a high chance that this video is going to be consumed, watched, and shared by people who do not follow you.

(14:03):
So when you start your video, you want to make sure that start to finish, really the whole video makes sense for someone who has no clue who the heck you are. And I see sometimes with some of my favorite people, they start their videos with the assumption that we just know. They're like, Hey, everyone, welcome back. I used to say that all the time in my YouTube videos. Welcome back to my channel. What if they're there for the first time? What did we think about that? Or just wasting time with things like not explaining who you are, what you've done, how they are even watching this video, all of those things, the context of it. So we want to create video content with the assumption that the person watching it has no fricking clue who you are. Now what? Okay, now, so we're going to get right to the point.

(14:59):
Second thing is, your video has to be consumable. It has to be consumable. So it has to be discoverable, meaning people who've never seen it before are like, okay, yeah, I'll give this a chance. And then they have to be able to consume it, watching it from start to finish. And this is the hardest part. Your content has to be good, and there's a lot of competition out here. I just texted a video to my husband of this absolutely adorable little girl going to Disney for the first time and getting the princess experience, and I was like, we need the princess experience. We have two daughters now. We're saving up for the princess experience when they're old enough. They're too little now. It was adorable. They weren't selling anything, I don't think. I guess Disney is Disney's going to get my money one day, but I texted that to my husband.

(15:51):
That is a consumable piece of content. I watched it from start to finish. This little girl was so happy with her princess experience, and it also leads to my third point, which is shareability. Your video has to not only be discoverable, meaning people who've never known you before can get interested consumable in the sense that they watch video start to finish, but it also to be shareable, and they want to share it with their people. Now, it's not like olden days where they have to share in order for someone to see it. It's just that the algorithm, Mr. Al, y'all remember him. He takes that as a really strong signal that people are interested in your content. When he saw me share that Disney video with my husband, Mr. Al pulled out his little detective glasses and went, huh, huh, something's happening here. People are sharing this video.

(16:48):
Let me randomly show it to more people. So I helped him, gave him a signal that was like, Hey, this video is important, and now he's sharing it with more people. So discoverable, consumable, shareable, all leads to last point, which is all about Mr. Apple, the algorithm. He's looking for those signals that people find your video, they consume it, they can share it so that he can then share it with more people. Because his ultimate goal is to keep people on his app for longer. So if we're talking about the TikTok algorithm, he wants to keep you on TikTok. If we're talking about the Instagram algorithm, he wants to keep you on Instagram. If we're talking about the Facebook reels algorithm, he wants to keep you on Facebook, and if he's not doing that, he has failed at his job. And so when we create micro video content, that's always pointing people to our website, always asking people to leave the app, and then we start seeing our views go down, we start seeing our shares go down.

(17:46):
That's because we are not talking the same language as Mr. Al. And Mr. Al wants to keep people on his app so he can make money by selling ad space. That's his whole job. So when we think about creating this content piece, it really goes into the top, the social media sales funnel, like your traditional sales funnel. It goes right at the top, right? It's that attraction level marketing where it's not really geared towards making a sale or building community necessarily. It's really like, Hey, I'm here. I see you, you see me. This could be the start of something. Let's see where this leads. So all of those things combined is why micro video is so important to business owners in 2024. It's why I'll continue to talk about it. Even with the rise of platforms like Threads, there's a tech space platform. It's doing lovely.

(18:45):
I'm having a lot of fun over there, such a different vibe than TikTok. And I'll be honest, my anecdotal experience is that I still end up spending more time on TikTok in my quote free time, not work time, free time than on threats because it's a little bit more passive, I guess. I'm just consuming and Threads is a little more active. That's just anecdotal. I will have more data as I go through this, and especially once Threads hits. Its one year birthday in July. I'm sure there will be more to explore there hinting, but I think outside of that micro video, it's here to stay. What do y'all think? Are we doing video? Do we feel lack of confidence around video? Are we still trying to figure it out? Let me know. I'd love to hear your thoughts. That's all for today. Bye for now.