Welcome to the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm your host,
Andrea Jones. Tune in every week as
we redefine marketing playbooks to break free from what we should
do so that we can scroll less, connect
more, and grow together.
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 wanna
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. Before we get into it, this episode is sponsored by
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So story time. I created my first video
in 2007. Okay? 2007.
I know I've talked about this before on the podcast, but it is,
like, so pivotal to understand that because that was, like, 15
ish years ago. At the time, it was very weird.
Okay? This was, my back in my YouTubing days. K. Back in
my YouTubing days, I had been watching
creators like Philip DeFranco and Jenna Marbles
and iJustine and was like, let me 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.
Right? And my first video was very awkward.
You know, if I was feeling brave, I would actually share some of it, but
I'm not that brave today y'all. It's, I wasn't even looking at the
camera. I was just recording myself talking about nothing. I
don't even remember. The video is still out there. Y'all probably could
find it if you dug real deep. But that was, like,
3 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. Right? Like,
there of course, I could overthink it, but there's a
naturalness to talking that that comes to me a little bit more
organically than writing. And I had been blogging at that point since 2004.
So, you know, 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.
I'm 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. 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 we I came from that background as as a video
person. So sitting here recording a podcast, it's a video podcast, to
me, is like 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 wanna talk today about, like, why I
tripled down on video in recent years and why I think you should as
well. And it all starts with the pandemic.
That little pandorama that we all went through in 2020.
Y'all remember? 2 weeks to crush the curb.
Yeah. More like 2 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 sec. TikTok existed
before March 2020. However, it wasn't that
popular. Let me actually look up a stat here.
Okay. So prior to TikTok, it was called Musically. It was really more
focused on music. It was kinda like a Vine competitor.
And then in 2017, they rebranded to be
called TikTok. Okay? So TikTok actually purchased Muscial.
Ly, and they rebranded.
By the end of 2019, they had
around a 150, 200,000,000 downloads. And
then q one of 2020 shot up to
over 318,000,000 downloads.
So almost double. I mean, don't check my math because, you
know, 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. I was
I saw TikTok rising popularity, but because of its
association with music and lip syncing and dancing, I wasn't interested.
Right? I even had logged onto to the app prior to 2020
and, was affronted because a video just, like, 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.
K. An in app video editor. This is huge. Because prior to TikTok,
you had to edit your video somewhere else. You had to have another app. Like,
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, Bette. I'm gonna 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. So 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. K. 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. Right? We know that we can do that. That was not a
thing 4 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, like, 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, right, before
the algorithm would start feeding you content. TikTok was like, you know
what? We're just gonna 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. And then the 3rd piece of this puzzle
is that you could go viral faster. K. 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. They 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. Right?
It was very hard to stumble upon something
that you hadn't seen before and,
it already be viral. Right? Like, usually, virality happened because
something was shared with you. Very similar to those email
chains, like, early 2000 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. This was my dad. And he would forward the memes.
K? So if you know, you know.
Whereas now with TikTok, you didn't really
have to know anyone else who saw that viral video. It didn't have it doesn't
have to be shared with you. TikTok just goes, you know
what? Andrea seems to like 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. Okay? So this is how TikTok
kinda 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 gonna take a quick break. When we come back, I'm
gonna talk about what this means for you as a business owner when we get
back.
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Alright. We're back. So why should you care as a
business owner? Well, those three things, consumability,
discoverability, virality, all impact
now what other social platforms are doing. And I call this like little
brother, little sister syndrome. But like 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. K. Snapchat was a thing, rose in
popularity. Instagram, Facebook was like, I could
do stories, and now we have Instagram stories. Okay.
I could do content that disappears in 24 hours. No problem.
So because of that, we now have Instagram stories.
Well, in 2021,
wait, hold on. Let me look at my check my dates here.
Ah, August 5, 2020
is when Instagram reels first became a thing. Okay. So
this is not even 6 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. Okay? So micro video, vertical
video, it's a whole thing now all because of TikTok
and its rising popularity.
So as a business owner, if you wanna capitalize on this, I think it's
a great idea. Consumer reports that
66% of people prefer 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. Right? So people watch a hell of a lot of
it online. Okay? So video, the queen, the
king, all of it. Right? But what this means for you as a
business owner is that you 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. And I've had at least a dozen clients over the past 4
years since the rise of TikTok go viral. By viral, I mean, over
a 1000000 views on a video. Right? Over a million. I've
had dozens more of my clients and students have,
explosive moments on social media because
of video. And even in recent history, one of my b roll
videos got over, like, 300 and something 1000
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. But
and here's the thing. In order to really
capture and create dynamic video on social media, you have
to consider these 4
things. K? 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.
Right? Even if it is even if it is going out to your people. Right?
This content discovery piece, this new side of social
media means that there's a high chance that this
video is gonna be consumed, watched, and shared by people who do
not follow you. So when you start your video, you wanna 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 with my YouTube videos. Welcome back to
my channel. What if they're there for the first time?
What do we think about that? Or just wasting
time with, like, things like,
not explaining who you are, what you've
done, how they are even watching this video, you know, all of those
things, the context of it. Right? So we wanna
create video content with the assumption that the person watching
it has no freaking clue who you are. Now what? K.
Now what? So we're gonna get right to the point. 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 you 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. Like, we have 2 daughters now. We're
saving up for the princess experience when they're old enough. They're too they're too
little now. It was adorable. They weren't selling anything, I don't think.
I mean, I guess Disney is. Disney's gonna get my money one day. But I
texted that to my husband. That
is a consumable piece of content. I watch 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
never known you before can can get interested, consumable
in the sense that they watch video start to finish, but it also has to
be shareable, and they wanna 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,
mister 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, mister Al pulled out his little detective glasses and
went, Something's happening here. People are sharing
this video. Let me randomly show it to more people. Right? 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.
K? So discoverable, consumable,
shareable, all leads to the last point, which is all about mister 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. Okay. 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.
That's because we are not talking the same language as
mister Al. And mister 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
of the social media sales funnel, like your traditional sales funnel. It goes
right at the top. Right? It's that that that attraction level
marketing where it's it's not really geared towards, you know, making
a sale or building community necessarily.
It's really like, hey, I'm here. I see you. You see
me. Let's this could be the start of something. Let's see where this
leads. Right? So all of those things combined
is why micro video is so important to
business owners in 2024. Is why I'll continue to talk about
it even with the rise of platforms like threads. Okay. There's a it's a
text based platform. It's doing lovely. I'm having a 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 unquote
free time, like not work time, free time than on threads.
Because it's a little bit more passive, I guess.
I'm just, like, 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 1 year birthday in
July. I'm sure there will be more, to explore
there. Hint. Hint. 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.