TikTok For Business Growth Fundamentals For Beginners

It's been a journey, and an exciting one. The results I shared here have changed A LOT. As at the time I was uploading this course on Udemy, I was almost hitting 15,000 followers and our customer base had grown way more than what I shared. This all happened within a few days. This is the kind of result you should expect when you begin to apply what I will share with you here.

Just a brief introduction on the entire course and what you'd be learning and why I created this course. If you are new to TikTok, you will learn how to get your first 1,000 highly engaged and profitable followers on TikTok. If you've been around but get little or no engagement, you can decide to delete your current account and then start over. Alternatively, you can decide to apply what you will learn. You will see your account begin to grow.

I felt I should first get this out of the way. As you'd see as you progress, TikTok is not a platform for only very young people. Your customers are on TikTok.

Your success starts with developing a clear message and identity. People who succeed at doing this find that they are better able to attract highly engaged and profitable followers within a very short time. Having a clear identity helps you to cut through the noise on TikTok and the internet. Your account will be home to the people you have been called to serve.

If you are taking this lesson before the module two where I demonstrated this process, then when you are done, skip to module 2, Lesson 1 - Leveraging AI to Determine Your Ideal Follower. Or you can go through the course sequentially. The choice is yours.

While TikTok generally favours an upbeat delivery style, there are still many ways to go about this. The style you choose should ideally be determined by the type of audience you are serving.

I strongly recommend that you plan out how you intend to publish content on TikTok for at least the first one month or two weeks. This way, you wake up everyday with clarity on what you should be posting. It can also mean that you can make several videos at once.

I cannot over-emphasize the power of hashtags on TikTok and why every video you publish should have relevant hashtags. In the second module, I demonstrate exactly how to do hashtag research and how to deploy it to your videos.

While hashtag is powerful, its important that you don't overdo it or pack into your videos hashtags that have nothing to do with your video. You will be hurting your videos and your account in the long run.

There is a right and a wrong way to choose the hashtags you wish to use in your videos. This is some guidance. Also refer to module 2, Lesson 3.

I have called the big text that is usually on top of the head or below the chin of most creators, Captions. It's important to always use that for all your videos. Also, using Captions app or similar app to add captions to your video is critical to making your videos more accessible to the deaf.

In this video I explain the right way to use captions so the purpose is not defeated.

It's important that you keep your videos simple. Remember that your aim is to be understood.

While TikTok now allows up to 10 minute long videos, I still recommend that you make short videos. When you check your analytics you will find that only a very small percentage of people actually watch videos to the end. People's attention span is getting shorter and shorter. This is why short videos do better.

Still related to the previous lesson, you should hit the nail at the head as soon as your video starts playing. The first few seconds are critical to the success of every TikTok video. On TikTok, there is no time for fluff.

It's important that you exude energy and alertness in every video. This engages your audience and keeps them glued for as long as possible.

This is perhaps the most important fundamental of creating great videos that people would love watching. Always strive to deliver value to your audience. Find out what is important to them and simply give it to them. Value must be seen from the point of view of your audience, not what you think is valuable.

As much as possible, go beyond talking to showing people what you are saying. This improves the perceived value of your videos.

This needs no further commentary. You should always aim to achieve this.

You are on TikTok to attract prospects and customers. Ensure you are ready to make a sale.

Apart from the fact that you can get people to subscribe to your Live, going Live fosters a stronger bond between you and your followers. Once you get to 1,000 followers, TikTok will enable you to start going Live.

Posting consistently is not only a show of discipline and focus on your part, but it also helps TikTok's algorithm to understand your rhythm and your followers too.

Here I talk about the tools I use for all my video editing - Inshot and Captions. Many people I know also use TikTok itself cos it's really a powerful editing tool. The point is to use any tool that helps you create good looking videos. It doesn't have to be Professional. TikTok only requires clear videos.

Remember that TikTok is a social media platform. One way to keep your videos doing well is to engage with your audience. Respond to comments. Reply DMs. As much as possible.

Consider this part one of a two part series. In Module two, I explored TikTok's analytics, pointing things we can learn from there to help with improving our videos.

I consider this one of the first things you should do. My first week on TikTok I got strikes cos I did some things that I was not supposed to do out of ignorance. The community guidelines are there to protect all TikTok's users so we have a healthy social platform. So, take time to go over TikTok's guidelines.

There are many things people do to grow their TikTok accounts which you should not do. It is possible to grow your TikTok account super fast without doing anything underhanded. More so, your account can easily be banned by TikTok and you would have to start all over.

The whole point of this course is to get you to sell your products and services. Your bio and the link on your bio must be working and ready to convert some of your visitors to customers.

Artificial Intelligence, in this case, ChatGPT can help you to determine your ideal audience. I consider this fundamental before even publishing your first video on TikTok.

There are millions of searches taking place on TikTok every second. Your goal is to ensure that when people search for videos in your niche, that your videos show up and becomes one of the videos that can potentially be clicked.

Hashtags are powerful and you should spend some time to find out the the right hashtags to use for each video. In this video, I demonstrate how this is done.

Here, I show what will happen when a video has been well optimized. This result usually happens over time and should not be expected immediately a video is published.

You have only 80 words with which to expertly craft your bio for maximum visibility. I have changed my bio a few times as I continue to do research on the best way to introduce myself. What I have at the moment appears to be the best I have come up with based on research.

I show in this video the right way to publish videos on TikTok if your desire is to get them seen by the millions of people that can potentially see them.

There are so Manu insights you can get from TikTok's Analytics. I walk you through some of them.

TikTok Ads System is powerful and can be used to boost engagement on your account and bump follower growth. I introduce it in this video and make some comments that you will find useful is you are in a country where TikTok Ad is not officially available.

I walk you through the TikTok Ads Manager and focus on the type of Ad required to boost engagement and follows.

Staying consistent is at the core of being successful on TikTok but knowing what to publish can be a problem. I have included this as a way of helping you with coming up with content ideas.