Why I TikTok (and how it’s going)
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I wrote this last week, before getting started. Below you’ll find the first of four reports on how my TikTok challenge is going, what I make of it and how I plan to continue.
I recently moved to Mexico City and my Spanish is, quite frankly, una mierda grande. Since I have 30 days on my hands and no other commitments, I will try to learn to speak Spanish like a Mexican as good as I can in a month. Apart from that I’ll use this timeframe to dive into TikTok. Why TikTok?
As a marketeer I have been sleeping on TikTok way too long. I’ve read how much it can drive sales, downloads and community growth but didn’t have a real reason to roll up my sleeves and get working. Well, until now.
The idea
Lern as much Spanish as I can in 30 days and document it on TikTok. Doing so I will try to accumulate 1000 followers. That’s 33 followers a day, wish me luck.
Why I believe this is a good time to start
It is not a particularly good time to start. I’m actually a bit late, too late maybe, to the party. Having crossed 1B users recently it is safe to say, that I am neither an early adopter, nor a fast follower but rather a late bloomer (none of these is a technical term).
- The lifycycle allows organic growth
However, I think TikTok is still early in it’s lifecycle with lots of opportunities for organic growth. Further, the design of the For You page makes it more likely to land a hit and grow the audience from there. - No longer story archs yet
Furthermore, there is quite a lot of homogenous content: Beautiful people, dancing, pranks, comedy. What I haven’t seen much yet is a format that got really big on YouTube: The VLOG. Maybe my algorithm doesn’t optimize for these creators, but developing a story arch over several videos seems not to be popular so far. - I’m exotic (and try to work a social media evergreen)
Lastly, and most importantly, I am in Mexico. The topic of cultural differences a la “In Germany we say SCHMETTERLING and everywhere else it’s actually a nice word” (Facebook) or “This how Russians drink, this is how Turks drink” (Instagram) seems to always work. Everyone can get behind stereotypes and laugh a little bit about ourselves. In the same way people seem to always be intrigued by others learning their language and culture. You have probably noticed: Everyone loves hearing their mother tongue with an accent — and hates hearing the accent of their fellow compatriots in other languages. This is what I’ll try to build on. - Spenglish speakers are a large audience Looooots of people speak “un pocito” Spanish. And lots of hispanics understand English, even if they don’t speak it. I believe that creating content on the verge of the languages can be appealing to both groups alike. Or it flops :)
The purple hair
It worked for Sascha Lobo, it worked for Rezo: Why shouldn’t it work for me?
The idea is rather simple (and not new): If you have a clear identifier, people can identify you easily (duh!). It’s much more likely to be remembered and refered to when you are “the German with purple hair” then “the German on TikTok”.
Furthermore, I intend to run around and talk to Mexicans on the street, as actively speaking a language is the fastest way to learn it. The purple hair is a fool-proof bridge from the online to the offline world so people can recognize me, ask for a Selfie and share it on their social → Growth.
(I’m aware that this implies my content will be somewhat popular, but afterall we entrepreneurs are hopelessly optimistic 🤷🏻).
I dyed my hair in the brand color of knugget, as a tribute to it’s premature death. I haven’t been able to let go yet, maybe I will after this month 😅
Other Growth “Hacks”
- Crowdsource Mexicanness
I planned out a few topics that should be fun and resonate well with the TikTok audience. These topics are mexican memes, mexican compliments and maybe pickup lines, mexican insults etc. When the topic comes up, I will ask the crowd to share their favorites in the comments so I can use them on the following day speaking to people on the street. This should be fun! - Make mistakes and ask for help
I will be talking to Mexicans and not get a lot of what they are saying. At the same time, I will switch back to English when I cannot say something in Spanish (yet). Lastly, I will make A LOT of mistakes. These are, theoretically, three very good oppotunities to drive comments by asking the crowd to correct me and help me translate. I hope the high engagement drives visibility. Problem: I need a crowd for it to work. - Be a guest at other TikTokers channels
To grow an audience in such a short amount of time, I will need some help. Collaborations have worked on other networks and I am sure they have worked on TikTok as well. Once I have produced and shared a handful of videos, I will reach out to other Creators and try to invite myself as a guest into their content. Let’s see how that goes.
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Week 1: What I did and how (bad) its going
To say this right out — I expected it to be much easier. I will briefly summarize why I did what and then condense some TikTok-related and personal learnings.
My content approach
As I wrote above, I thought that continuous storytelling is not yet a thing on TikTok (at least I am not aware of it). I drew an analogy to YouTube and saw some potential but having spent more time on the platform I think differently now. I quickly changed my approach, here is what I produced:
- Day One(1:52): Vlog about my goal and my motivation. The idea was to have people relate to me and what I aspire to do, much like how protagonists in movies always have a mission.
- Day Two (0:33): 5 free things you can do to practice your Spanish. It’s a common format on TikTok and I wanted to see if shorter videos work better. This one is in English, I don’t really know why.
- Day Three (0:20): Teach me something Mexican. I jumped over my shadow and asked Mexicans on the street if they can teach me something Mexican. Another common format and quite a lot of fun actually, Mexicans are so nice!
- Day Four (0:29) Buying juice in Mexico vs. Germany. Comedy is one of the biggest categories on TikTok so I wanted to test it out. I shot it in 10 minutes and you can see that. The “act like two people”-thing on TikTok gotta be a bit more sophisticated.
- Day Five (0:45) What does my juice friend Jaime say to my video? It’s somewhat meta and not certainly not my best work. Super funny how he reacted though, Jaime es muy divertido!
- Day Six (0:09) Nobody: ; Girls in their Insta Stories Here I tried a popular format on TikTok, where people (mostly guys) imitate female influencers in their Insta stories. It was 22:00 and I didn’t have a video yet, really appreciated the support of my friends acting here :)
- Day 7 (0:10) Sunday Night out in CDMX More of an Insta Story format and borne out of the fact that the Sunday shook out very different than planned.
As you can see I experimented with different formats. However, it’s difficult to really draw any learnings because I GET VERY LITTLE ORGANIC VIEWS!
Organic Reach on TikTok is lowlow
I was really surprised by that. I cut a video I made for LinkedIn in three parts and uploaded to TikTok in Feburary, each got around 500 views. My assumption was that this is roundabout what you get before the algorithm decides how good your video is.
Now, I seem not to get a single organic view, at least not shortly after the video got released. I have uploaded videos and two hours later they had 1 or 2 views. You read that right, ONE or TWO. Either I am doing something really wrong here (please tell me) or TikTok has significantly changed the algo.
Maybe TikTok wants creators to advertise their content with their current following on other platforms but having deleted my Instagram account last year, my options are limited. (I have a new one now but mostly because people in clubs ask you for your Insta, not your phone number).
TikTok insights
Here are a handful or first learnings regarding producing content for TikTok:
- Organic reach is significantly lower than in Feburary
I’m not sure if that’s a fact or I’m missing something but it makes it a lot harder to grow and test what works. - Videos have to catch you early, be crisp and offer value
Since my boobs and booty are not so tiktokable and I don’t wanna dance, I can either offer unique insights or entertain. The “Follow my progress” thing might not be a good call, at least not without an audience. - It’s fun to not care too much about polish
TikTok videos are scrappy and supposed to be like that. This makes it much easier from a production standpoint, I can hack stuff together and my perfectionism doesn’t even care. It takes me around 2h to go from idea to shooting to pre-edit in Premiere and then tiktokize in TikTok. - Content has a longer lifetime than on other networks
All videos I released keep getting more and more views over several days. On other networks, particularly Facebook and Instagram, content gets old quickly. On day 1 and 2 it gets views and then it steeply decreases. The first video I released 7 days ago pretty consistently got view over several days. - Video editing can be really easy on TikTok
Especially for the last video I was amazed how easy video editing can be. If you shoot a handful of short, dynamic clips you can have TikTok put them together on the rythm of a song. This cuts down the time effort of post production significantly.
How I feel about my TikTok challenge
I feel quite ambiguous about it. On some days I asked myself why I have ideas like that and feel obliged to act them out (“If you don’t do it, you only don’t do it because you’re afraid what others think…”) and on other days it was fun to learn and play around with TikTok.
In the meanwhile, I sunk quite some time into “market research” and this can very quickly extend to a 2h-TikTok-session after which I usually feel like an eggplant.
Comfortzonewise, filming myself is ok, I’ve done it. Filming myself in public is quite different, because people. I am honestly afraid to be deemed an influencer as I discussed in the last post. (I think it’s more likely I’ll start working for Monsanto then you seeing me with a selfie-stick.) Filming myself in public while speaking Spanish is so far out of my comfort zone that I have to really not care what people think around me to not sprint into the next bar, order a tequila and a beer and start sobbing. Overcoming my social fear is actually quite liberating.
My content plan for week 2
Having tried my “own” stuff this week, I will aim to exploit one of TikToks key features: Building on top of other peoples content. I will spent even more time on my For You page and try to identify content I can somehow jam with. I think you can use other peoples videos and popular sound tracks and that’s what I’m gonna explore this week — starting today.
