TikTok for Business 2022. Guest: Seva Mozhaev

[Music] [Music] and a global greetings to everybody welcome to the good for business show i am your host michelle j raymond and i am joined by tick tock super creator sev welcome to the show thank you for having me michelle it's a pleasure to be here i am very excited to have you here as i shared with you yesterday it's for the street cred points with my niece and nephew who i tried to say if i hang out with the cool tik tok creators does that make me cool you and they said sort of not really because they don't get linkedin but you planted a seed with me yesterday and you said michelle like they're gonna grow up like and i was like boom like you know everything you're doing now is gonna pay off in five years time when these guys are hitting the workforce um and so i just wanted to share that with you people that haven't come across you may not know too much about tick tock maybe a bit curious the typical isn't it all those silly dancers who are you sev who do you help and what do you do so originally i migrated from the soviet union former soviet union and uh in the 90s and i um yeah just started learning english i guess and um found my way into the football world playing in the west australian football league and then i decided to go to uni and went into teaching because my mom's a teacher my great grandma's a teacher and uh yeah did that got the degree and during during that time i was as i was getting a degree i had an injury in footy i did my acl and i had a one year off um stint and in that time i picked up photography because i always loved it and i thought okay let's go a little a little bit more of a proper camera dslr so i did that for start of 2015 and loved it absolutely loved it take photos every day it was my thing it was great and then over the next few years i graduated uni um i took uh i took a yeah i quit um football and uh began my teaching career and i i got a permanent job rather quickly i don't know something about me that they liked and uh over the next two years when 2019 in that timeline i discovered uh ticktock from one of the students in class was on tick tock and i i was like what's so funny i want to be involved you know because i was always about wanting to know what the kids were interested in because i wanted to build rapport or build my in-school personal brand i call it now with the kids so i knew what lingo they were into what trends where they were doing what apps they were doing what what games they were playing all of that and yeah tick tock was it lip syncing and dancing was the craze and i was like nah that's not for me but i'll download it and and do my own thing on there give it a crack you know and then um yeah the kids found my tick tock page like randomly like sir we love your tick tock page and i'm like what i've got like 20 followers how did you even find my account that's weird and um because i'd never i never went private on social media apart from maybe my facebook and the reason was i had a whole photography page sev's pics on instagram and i wasn't going to go private on that because i wanted to keep sharing my photos the kids found that and they found that more interesting and at the start of every class i'd share them the photos i would take that week and they were they were invested they were like yep we are we'd love to come to your class we don't really like the content that you that you put out to us in the lesson because the curriculum is outdated where enough but we love to hear your stories of photography and i was like aha okay what else am i going to do here so then what happened was um i dived into um i dove into wedding photography because i really liked it give it a crack and started getting a few bookings just organically through facebook pages and word of mouth and then there was a few um quoting kind of services online that i found news and then i was like surely not i you know plugged myself on uh tick tock because in 2019 i had a video that went a little bit viral like 30 40 000 views and the followers started going up like if you go to my instagram page and go to the tick tock um journey highlights you can actually see from start to finish the entire journey because i documented all of it i never knew that i was going to get to where i am today but i documented everything i'm so glad i did because it's literally a perfect timeline so anyway fast forward to 2020 and i said to my principal i'm gonna have a a year off and this is before covert hit and i started getting bookings for weddings um and again i didn't really plug my um tick tock then yet that i told everybody i was a wedding photographer but then i was like you know what i'll give it a go i'll put one out two bookings in two days and all i did was give tips about being a wedding photographer and the comments were i didn't know you're a wedding photographer i had a 13 year old kid comment saying sev in 15 years when i get married can you please be my photographer right planting the seed and i was like i'm on to something here let's double down on this anyway um i i stayed in the school system for 2020 because you know it's a it's a recession-proof pandemic-proof government job so it was a bit of a play there but by mid-2020 i could have quit and but i didn't because i committed to the kids i love the kids and uh before the end of 2020 i was booked out for weddings for the entire 2021 and by from memory february march 2021 i was booked out for 2022 and then by mid-year 2021 i was booked out two years i had a two-year sales pipeline and over 70 percent of that was from tick tock organic leads from tick tock for my personal service based business which is wedding photography so within two years or three years of no probably two years of stepping into the tick tock world thinking like everybody else going this is a lip sync dance app for kids to going i'm booking full grown adults that can only get married legally if they're over 18 and wedding photography is not cheap and i'm now booked out for two years i can quit my job i have a look back and i talked about that on linkedin and i didn't i didn't i wasn't even on linkedin properly at the start of last year i had an account you know back in the day everyone has one of those accounts oh i'll make one i made it and then i started going on a little bit more and yeah companies and brands and businesses started hitting me up saying i'm interested in what you're doing i want to hear more about your two-year sales pipeline can you help me and my business or my company or my brand i'm like what that's a thing and uh in the mix of all of that um clubhouse was a like when it was rising up that was very helpful for me too i don't use it anymore because every last time i went back there was just a bunch of snakehole salesmen but when it was really pumping i got so confident in what i had because i would jump up on stage and just non-stop talk i wouldn't take a breath i'm much like i am now and i would get people going sev you have something here why don't you like do this as a course or why don't you do a workshop or something and i'm like well i have a teaching degree i know how to write stuff i know how to structure things i know how to make systems and i know how to keep people accountable because i did it with children and i have creative direction because i'm a wedding photographer my whole job is to make you look good on your wedding day so i was like all right stars have aligned let's do it and here i am talking with you and life's great i'm enjoying it i get to work from home my dogs are here and i got my first studio two months ago in the city um you know it's it's crazy and i'm still feel like it's day one and i'm winging it oh my god and like if people are listening into this and not being inspired like i don't know what else i can do for you because it just shows that anything's possible for anyone and i think you know it's those that pursue that beyond the part where you don't know what you're doing where it feels like what is going on here am i a phony are people going to think that i don't know what i'm talking about i don't have a piece of paper to back it up so i i really wanted to share that story with the audience today because i think it's just really powerful now i want to ask you one quick question which is you've come from tick tock creator for you know several years now and you jump onto the platform called linkedin what are your observations about the differences between the two like what do you find weird what do you think is cool good question um there was one bit of the story i did i missed out on i ended up going to 1.2 million followers just in case everybody hasn't seen what that is um and i started getting my bookings uh for wedding photography around the 10 20 000 follower mark and now it's just an open tab that i'm trying to close but it's stuck open but the difference with tick tock and linkedin is the language that you speak because when i uh went from facebook pages and quoting services online for weddings um the reason why i left those and went fully organic content at scale was because of the budget right um i found that i've got a lot of knockbacks because when you have a two-year sales pipeline you're right you're too cheap realistically so you need to double or even triple your rates even as a wedding photographer and when i did it i didn't believe it because i was like no way my business coach said you should do it i'm like no i i don't think that that's possible four weeks later i had four bookings which would have been normally 10 to 12 bookings and i was like oh my god but how that translates into linkedin is again the language so i have clients that approach me from tiktok they find me on tik tok they stalk me on instagram they validate me on my website and you know i'm legit and i'm not trying to sell you anything i'm just trying to provide value so then you can make a decision and ask me going hey do you do one-on-one mentorships and i'm like yep here it is and that now has also translated into linkedin because linkedin has more decision makers ceos founders directors people that are are on there like who who have done a lot and a lot of experience and they want to see they want to know what's next they want to jump onto the next thing to then leverage that and expand more and scale more you don't see that on other platforms so that's why i see linkedin is more valuable in that way but that comes now to a language that i speak i can't be the sev on tick tock i am on linkedin but also i have one of my biggest clients ever the director of the agency of the marketing agency that found me who has them as a client found me on tiktok just scrolling through tick-tock i remember getting a call one day from his assistant going hey sev well um we love your stuff uh the director he um he found you on tick-tock and we'd love to have a chat and i'm like damn so when someone says linkedin is only b2b bs you can go inside you can go on a tick tock and like you said at the start your kids they or your niece your nephews they know they they've seen me before they understand they become the business cards it sounds evil but you know like if a kid goes mom i want to go here because i saw it on tick tock they're like the mum doesn't have to do any of the work though oh my god it's a great idea right it's it's problem solved i love it and because i actually saw some stats that tick tock put out for their business stats and it said that over 70 percent of the people that they interviewed actually said that tiktok had influenced them to research a brand or reach out and purchase a product from a brand which is just crazy stats um so tell me something if i'm a brand an or a business owner and i want to go and have a go at tik tok how do i approach it differently to say someone that's doing it for their personal account is there a difference or is it you are a tick-tock version of yourself and then an off-platform version of yourself how does that work um i think i think it's pretty universal um for the most part the the principles are the same everybody needs a mascot every business every entity needs something at the forefront of it and i feel that the next few generations thrive off of that i see kids on ipads all the time and they just watch one specific character whether it's bluey or or dora or the wiggles or whoever they're making millions of dollars those franchises and if you can create a lovable trustworthy character from your business company or whatever giving value that is the play that is the ultimate play and now i think what's happening is the successful companies who have been around for a while they're they're behind the behind the scenes heads of they could leverage this even more they can become famous online and people will start going what does this person actually do and then they go stalking they go oh he owns this oh cool well i like the person i'm going to invest in that company i'm going to go to that company it's it can scale all the way to the top like like i would i wouldn't be surprised if like someone like gina reinhardt or twiggy forest you know started to to speak a little bit more because they're you know they're doing their they're doing their mining stuff billionaire thing they could they could take it so much further and like people people online um or like companies like you know the oil and gas sector you know that they're trying to say that they're going to do stuff with the community which is great you know not the biggest of fans of uh ruining the the earth but i'm not going to go hippie on you about this it's like each their own but if they want to scale it more then if they really want to make an impact and really drive community they got to put their faces in the front of it not just rely on rio tinto this and bhp that and woodside this it's like who cares like the kids don't care the kids don't even want to work there because they want to do some fun stuff but if they put themselves in the front line um the kids would go oh i've seen them on tick tock ah you know that's the evolution over the next two to ten years beyond and there could be some people that are listening to this going sev yeah that's great for tick tock but it doesn't happen on linkedin now i'm here to actually share that that's not the case because i went to a linkedin webinar yesterday on content marketing that was researched by some of the biggest institutes in the world so i'm guessing that linkedin have pumped a ton of money into this research and basically what they shared was exactly the same thing having a mascot is something that is really critical to creatives on linkedin ads and organic content for that matter so a good example of it is salesforce they have their little uh cartoon character which is a huge part of their brand and they were actually recommending to make sure that more companies on linkedin are using these characters as well so if you think that it's just a dismissive oh that's tick tock it's not linkedin i think you're missing such a huge play so i absolutely yeah agree with what you're saying there i think with linkedin um now like for what i've seen personally just organic reach i get a message or two every day from someone new going hey sir we'd love to catch up hey sir we'd like to pick your brain hey we'd love to have a coffee you know as much as that's cool i'm like okay cool how do i get this into a converted you know sale or whatever i'm doing but to be honest i'm not chasing that it just comes naturally for me but for someone that is the the bottom line is yes you have to be a mascot but you have to come with intents you can't just jump on a platform go oh okay linkedin's next all right cool cool it's like no you still have to have that authentic brand about you and if you do that and and show compassion and show that you actually care the content will just like calm and calm and calm but with the research i'm saying for linkedin i think that over the next few years when people more people flood to it um it'll be it'll be more of uh i wouldn't be surprised if they did get a for you feed but the language would be business oriented it would be busy you know what it's called it's called the discover you page uh so there's a new page coming um they're testing it right now being rolled out so you absolutely smack on the money now so there you go it's called the i think discover me discover something page but it's about discovering things that aren't in your first degree connection so really exactly what you said how do brands people get discovered outside of that first degree small world that we've got and i think that you know linkedin always takes cues off other platforms what's working what's not some things work and resonate some things don't goodbye linkedin stories i miss you uh but you know there's always going to be you know evolution on the platform and i think as creators if you think that the algorithm is penalizing you actually no it's not it's your community that's saying your content doesn't resonate anymore because if it resonates they'll press buttons they'll comment they'll get involved so you know a lot of it falls back on us and that is huge with the with the content creation like but when people don't uh when people were doing well with their vanity metrics and then it drops they think they get shadow band doesn't this shadow banning like you know like there is there is times like on instagram you can clearly tell you've been shadow band because when people try to research your name you're not turning up but like the bottom line is the market gets over you like um unless you're a complete outlier and for some and you pass that barrier of popularity where it's just exponential it's there's like point one percent get there but we all think we can and it is possible but it the bottom line is you just need to keep pushing out value and you need to enjoy it you need to enjoy it if you do it specifically to go oh my god this is the be all end all if this video doesn't hit my business is going under you're gonna people gonna see your desperation in your voice in your eyes in your face going uh nah no good you know but that's this is a whole another conversation about business there and you know you know showcasing your knowledge and showcasing your value um if people don't if people don't see it you're dead in the water from the beginning but that's the other thing don't keep doing the same thing always experiment it's a 80 20 strategy 80 what works 20 experimental i've been doing it for over three years and i have outlasted a lot of other creators at this from the start of tick tock i was in a creators group on tick tock two years ago and 95 percent of them aren't even on the platform anymore and they had more followers than me they were getting more views but towards the end they were all saying the same thing where why am i not getting any views why why is it oh my god tick tok sucks blah blah blah blah blah blah you know it's the same with every other platform the platform i think yeah i think it comes back to what you said before do things that you enjoy as well because if you don't enjoy it you burn out it's that simple when you're creating content create things that you enjoy that play to your strengths try some new things and don't be afraid for it to flop you know too many people want the perfect you know strategy that will make sure that everything performs every single time and you never grow from just doing same old same old um so i want to know something so a brand comes to you today and they say you know sev we want a tick-tock strategy like what's the time frame on this like if a client comes to me on linkedin we're talking i would say minimum six months probably more like 12 months before we start to see something is tick-tock similar or is it faster at the moment because of you know just the popularity like what's your thoughts on that so firstly i start off with observations of what people are doing and then i'll tell you what i am doing for what i have done and what i'm doing for my clients so at the moment i'm seeing people jump on and jump straight into ads without building a brand online wrong doesn't work reason why that is is i want to check your validity and there's no way to do it because i'm going straight to the landing page or the click funnel i don't want to do that i want to see more of your content and and and get nurtured by it not see the same ad every time and what i'm seeing is these these agencies they're they're going we'll do a campaign campaign to me is a curse word because campaign means a one-off like like i wanna i want an ongoing campaign like like like like brand building brand building right that's the play and that's the long term play and uh historically over the last three years of the people i've been working with the ones that have been most successful early have the ones that have been putting out two to three pieces of content a day and all of a sudden people listening now go oh my god that's too many that's too many things but i have a system that i have been building over the last two years specifically over the last six months actually that i've that i've got perfect it's it's gold anybody can can can take it and and run it and go actually it's not that hard to make two to three pieces a day then when they actually do it hence the accountability they'll be able to see results probably within the first month because it's quantity first then it becomes quality and then it becomes quantity of quality because you've listened to your market you implement the 80 20 strategy and then you're often racing i've managed to build two accounts over a hundred thousand followers each yes it's vanity metrics but there's another point to this later on within three months however agencies title gurus coaches go here's how i built a client's instagram or no sorry tick-tock page in one week and they say we built it in one week into a hundred thousand followers no you didn't because you started three months of slow slow slow growth and then it went bang but you're bsing your your your new target audience thinking it's going to happen in seven days straight away and when it doesn't there's some salt in the in the water in the mouth whatever you call it and then that cripples them going oh i don't trust that anymore i don't think tick tocks for me so agencies are actually stuffing up tick-tock for for clients because they're doing it wrong and then i come and go hey you should do a tick tock account now we've already tried that and then i do an audit and i'm like no you didn't you didn't really try it you added you ran a campaign with an agency you put out 11 influences and got 12 million views over five videos why are you telling me it's not working because it's paid ad there's no brand so to answer your question end rant it's between three to six months because you're brand building and over that time i'm not centric to tick tock anymore i'm pushing facebook pages i'm pushing youtube shorts i'm pushing instagram reels because it's there it's an and play and then the language slightly changes for linkedin but it's slowly becoming the same language i'm seeing that and that's that's what you need to do it's not hey it's tick tock now it's and tick tock now and this is how you do it and the repurposing system i have is insanely good it's it takes one day one day to set up 30 plus pieces of content and then the only hard part is the complexity of the content that you make or film depending on who you are and what your content pillars are if you have your content pillars solid and you're able to structure that again my system's got that you're able to batch everything within a couple of days you don't need big agencies you just need structure and a system and my clients i prefer internal marketing teams because i go in i upskill them for three months i internally train them i create the system for them doing it with a client right now and they love me already it's great yeah now i'm like okay accountability you need to make sure you keep it up one instagram story a day is gonna cut it yeah can i tell you something funny and i'm going to sound like a broken record here and sound like i'm part of the sev fan club which i am but i want to tell you again the b2b research that linkedin was presenting yesterday absolutely said the split should be 60 40. 60 of your time is building brand and 40 is on these like paid demand strategies now why do they right because the long term brand building exercise pays back exponentially more than those short-term gains from a paid strategy exactly and i am in a similar position where people come to me about linkedin company pages and they want to spend money on ads because they've got a budget and i say to them but you don't know what works on the platform you don't know who your target audience is what content do they like what style what format any of these kind of things if you can't answer that all you're doing is burning money on the other side and linkedin will thank you you'll then say linkedin doesn't work because we don't blame ourselves we blame the platforms and then you're gonna take off and say okay i'm gonna go throw my money youtube shorts or instagram or this or that um and so i find it it's you know we tend to think that these platforms are all so different but i think the principles at its at their core are actually really really similar which i didn't expect it to be this similar in this conversation but the more you speak the more and like there is just so much commonality here that is crazy so to finish up and i know we've covered a lot and i appreciate how generously you've shared everything so what's the biggest mistake that brands are making is it that they're jumping straight to paid or is there something else that's going on here yeah they're jumping straight to paid they're not having a mascot they're trying things that are outdated they're going straight to trends and they um they also hire agencies who fluff them with vanity metrics and to summarize all that in my favorite quote this year in marketing marketing is when you ask someone out on a date and branding is the reason they say yes branding comes first absolutely like i'm writing the linkedin branding book it'll be out on november 18 for exactly this reason because when i set my business up two years ago two and a half years ago i didn't get the impact as i shared many times i come from a sales background and the branding was always handled by another team and then i set my own business up and all of a sudden it's like oh now i get it you know i really understand the importance of it so you will not get any arguments every single show sev i ask uh the people that join me to share one tip an actionable tip that someone that's listening in can take away and implement today if they want to explore tick tock for business what do you think that tip would be from you go to the american side of tick tock and just search up whatever your niche is whatever your industry is whatever your business is on tick tock filter it by most liked most popular and have a look at what they're doing all the americans are killing it the reason why they're killing it because there's 300 million of them they've got more competition they need to be more creative they need to hustle and they they need to outdo each other there's more there's more um intent there's more desperation and over in australia there's not that much everybody's going you know whatever you know how are you you just just find find an american account that doing that's doing what you're doing here and just repurpose that because that's what trends are that's what music music these days is all repurposed sampled stuff from 70s disco you don't have to reinvent the wheel you know the brainstorming comes in from already made content you just repurpose it and if you're still struggling i've got the system teach you exactly how to do it i love it and i think you know for me if i'm going to give people a tip from this i think it's to just not disregard it and go in with an open mind because it's the same with company pages i have people that have a fixed opinion on what they think they are and how they think they work platforms have changed and evolved we know the demographics for instance on linkedin right now are literally split roughly 50 50 between baby boomers at one end and then we've got all the younger generations uh you know gen zed millennials right now on the platform 50 50 we've got a spread now we're really lucky in australia because when people say to me michelle my clients aren't on the platform i say do you know that there's 48 of the australian population on linkedin we have one of the highest per capita usages in the world and that's a real opportunity so my point being open minds see what's possible learn from experts like sev and you know go forth and grow your business because that's what the good for business show is all about and so uh speaking of branding next week i am joined by my linkedin bestie the power of michelle squared michelle griffin and i are going to be talking all about brand building so who would have thought a great segue into that one so i appreciate your time today serve i appreciate everybody that's joined in into the comments we'll make sure that we come back and circle around and answer any questions and respond so don't forget to go to sev's profile on linkedin in the top right hand corner underneath the banner is a bell make sure you click on that so you see all of his great content that he's putting out on the platform and of course go and find him on tick tock at sev's picks if i've got that right sev do correct me got it nailed it uh so yeah thank you everybody and we will see you next week for the good for business show cheers [Music] you

2022-09-03 08:17

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