Content is King, But You’re Doing it Wrong.

The year is 2022 and organic reach on the core social media platforms are at an all-time low. You have heard social media influencers and non-influencers beating the TikTok drum but you’ve avoided it. The claims are that it’s a dancing app, or an app that’s not for business. But you probably thought the same way about Facebook, Instagram and maybe even YouTube. In this article we break down that thought about TikTok and share some insights with you as to how we helped a client launch their account and gain over 2,000 followers in a month.

What is “Content” in 2022?

In my opinion, content in 2022 is short-form vertical video or well-produced “horizontal” video. I could easily make a case that still photos and graphics are useless in your content endeavors, whether it’s organic posts or paid media.

Let’s talk specifically about video content and the platforms that support it and focus on it:

• Facebook (Meta) - big brother blue rolled out Facebook Reels capabilities and the 40+ crowd instantly started selling their MLM products overnight.
• Instagram - the habitual test platform for Meta, Facebook has been video-focused for quite some time. From stories, to IGTV and now to Reels.
• YouTube - this is a no-brainer but YouTube rolled out YouTube Shorts March 18th, 2021 (nearly a year to the date of me writing this article). This is their focus on short-form video
• Pinterest - video pins are a thing and they are a BIG way to standout in the sea of Canva-created static image pins.?
• Snapchat - snapchat has been 60 second or less videos for pretty much its entirety. Depending on your product offering, Snapchat is a great ad platform as well.
• TikTok - Ah yes, the little brother that gets picked on yet it can pull back and knock you out with a single punch. TikTok has some of the best viral capabilities of all of these platforms. And in March, 2022 they started to roll out 10 minute TikToks. That means they are coming after the big play button YouTube for the mid-form content.?

So as you can see, nearly every platform supports video in some capacity and quite-frankly they will “promote” your posts more if you roll out content based on their recent innovations. Instagram and Facebook Reels are an easy way to rack up a few thousand views if done correctly.?

Can My Business Leverage Short-Form Video?

Yes! 100%. Every type of business can leverage short-form video effectively. The problem typically comes in the form of putting a consistent effort behind it.?

We always suggest that every business start out as a creator account on a platform like TikTok vs being a ‘business’ account. Why is that? You get access to trending sounds that way. This is the easiest way to get more views on your TikToks early-on. Eventually you will want to move to a business account so you can add a link to your profile and leverage some of the business functionality.?

But I Don’t Have Fancy Video Equipment

That’s completely fine, but I bet you have a smartphone that has pretty good video quality. In-fact, if you are a business owner you can get an iPhone 13 Pro or similar model and (please talk to your tax advisor about this first) write it off as a business expense. It’s a needed piece of equipment for you to market and advertise your business.

The biggest adjustment you need to make is that you need to take video content throughout your day instead of snapping photos. That’s the biggest hurdle somebody needs to go through to start creating content at scale.?

Get yourself a good quality smartphone and you can typically find a microphone for that smartphone on Amazon. They aren’t always needed, but if you want to have extra crispy sound, this helps.

My Business is Boring, What Do I Create?

First off, get that idea out of your head. Your business isn’t as boring as you might think. It feels boring to you because you do it every single day, but to an outsider your business is fascinating.?

Let’s take the industry that’s typically thought of as safe and boring. Accounting.

Sorry to all of my accounting friends reading this but you’d be naive to think that people think otherwise about your industry.

What sort of content could an accountant create? Here are a few different angles:

Day in the life

• Extremely popular for service-based businesses. While you might spend most of your days crunching numbers you could feature one issue that you worked through in that day as your main point

# Common Mistakes We See As Accountants

• Think like 3-5. Don’t do too much here, it’s called short-form video for a reason.
• Take things that you would consider FAQs or common mistakes and answer them

Tips for your audience

• Similar to common mistakes, but this would be tips for your specific niche. If you primarily do personal accounting or business accounting you would center your content around that
• The easier to understand the better

Resources for your target demographic

• A free download of some sort. Maybe a small business revenue / expense tracking Google sheet that has your business name on it. Something like that.
• Create a video showing how easy it is to track all of your revenue and expenses through the year to make the business tax time a little easier

These are just a few ideas that came to me quickly while writing this. The real thing to focus on is that these ideas can be adopted for any business account.

Creating Content - Frequency

So how often should you be shooting and posting content as a business account? You’re not going to like the short answer but please entertain me.?

The short answer is that you should be posting short-form video at least once daily. Maybe even multiple times per day if you can.

But how the heck are you supposed to create that much content? You have a business to run.

Batch your content.

What does that mean? I’ll explain.

You know how some days at work you just feel unstoppable? Like no matter what task crosses your to-do list you can just crush it out of the park? You will have similar days with content creation. The real trick is aligning your content batching days on the days when you don’t feel so productive from a work standpoint.?

When you’re in the zone creating content. Maybe you worked out that day and are feeling good about yourself. Maybe you got your hair done, nails done and are lookin’ good as hell. Doesn’t matter. Record as much as you can, edit it in your platform of choice (for me it’s TikTok) and SAVE AS DRAFT. Then, when you’re needing content you know for a fact that you can roll out content even if you are sick and don’t want to “create” anything.

In Summary

How are you ever going to know what content works for your business and your audience if you aren’t experimenting and trying different ideas? You won’t. In fact, I know this to be true because we had a client push back on us about creating so much content for TikTok.?

Once they started creating content at scale they started to reach more and more people. The biggest change was they had a few videos go for a few hundred thousand views. When you can achieve that on the organic side of things you are getting a ton of brand exposure at no significant cost to you. That’s the special sauce there.

Shoot me a DM to set up a call so we can chat about TikTok strategies for business and how you can leverage the platform to help scale up your business!