TikTok Wont Stop, Unless You Are in Montucky, I mean Montana

Well, it happened, Montana has banned TikTok from the whole state. That's right, the app won't open if you are in Montana. Back to cow tipping for Montanians but it really makes you wonder, is this where every state is headed, and why?

We can start with the why, no nod to Simon Sineck, does anyone else find him to be annoying? Anyway, I digress. The government contends that TikTok is really bad for people in general, especially kids, and doesn't particularly care for all the alleged spying. There is a reason why the US has so many sanctions against Chinese products and it's not just jealousy. In fact, there is a totally different version of the app for kids in China so they clearly know it's a problem. But hey, we could talk about this all day and it wouldn't matter at all. The real question is, should you be making Tiktok videos for your business or branded podcasts?

The answer is ... maybe, no...sure, why not...actually probably not, definitively. I'm all for hanging out at the beach but not super into making sand castles and that's what Tiktok feels like to me right now, shaky ass ground. Even if you go viral on the Tok, do they call it that, will that translate into discovery calls? Actual leads? Actual revenue?

I'm going to bring it all back to my fishing analogy, of course. TikTok is the massive trolling net of the marketing ocean. You will catch some stuff, some of it will already be dead, some not be what you wanted, some of it will be unidentified and maybe, if you are lucky, 10% of it will actually be what you were hoping for but will yield less results than direct mail, doh.

Don't be the fish, don't get distracted by the shiny thing. If you are already making short-form vertical content then sure, put it on Tiktok, why the hell not? However, if you are hoping Tiktok is going to be the answer to your pipeline problems, you might end up with a rusty bike in your net instead.

Moral of this story: Focus on the platform where your clients are, not the platform everyone is talking about. Create content for them, imagine them when you are writing the email or recording the podcast. Business is personal and for most of us we don't need a wide net, we need a handful of big fish and we are ready to head back to land.

Too much coffee? Not enough, you tell me. Until next time, be excellent to each other. Even better, lets have coffee together, virtually of course. https://calendly.com/mollyruland/discovery