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Social Media Marketing Talk Show
TikTok Updates: AI Alive, New Ads, Direct Messaging, and More
00:15:33
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- [00:01]
Michael Stelzner
Hey there, it's Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner. Are you a marketer trying to navigate the AI revolution? What if you could create content twice as fast, automate tedious tasks and become the go to AI expert in your company? The AI Business Society, brought to you by your friends at Social Media examiner gives you expert led training, a supportive community and proven frameworks to master AI marketing that will boost your value and your productivity. Join now and lock in your discounted member pricing@social mediaexaminer.com AI.
- [00:44]
Jerry Potter
Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Talk show, your guide to the ever changing world of social media. On today's show, we're going to Explore the biggest TikTok updates you can be on top of these, including a new AI tool that could make for some really engaging content, which is always good for reach as well. Also, are you using TikTok paid ads? Would you try them if they were free? And a new AI seller assistant to help determine how your TikTok shop is doing. This is a the type of tool that I think is going to make everything easier for us as marketers. There's a lot going on. Let's get you updated. My name is Jerry Potter, host of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a Social Media examiner production where we break down all the latest social media news and what it means for marketers like you. Today I'm joined by Kenya Kelly. Kenya is a TikTok and Instagram Reels expert and runs a social media agency and is also host of the if you create it podcast. Kenya, welcome to the show.
- [01:37]
Kenya Kelly
Thank you, Jerry. Glad to be here.
- [01:39]
Jerry Potter
So the TikTok AI innovations, they really seem to be leading the charge with some of this stuff. Let's start off. Tell us about AI Alive animation. What is that?
- [01:48]
Kenya Kelly
Yeah, so one of the things that I've noticed with it, I've been testing it out myself, is the ability to take your still images and it'll actually turn it into videos. So I have this image of mine where I say, you can sell courses on TikTok. I'm like standing on the side of the street and I put it into the AI and then all of a sudden I'm moving. It reminds me of what's that AI tool that you're able to do that with? The hey gen. It's one of them, but it really allows for way more creativity outside of you actually creating videos just on the inside of the TikTok platform.
- [02:19]
Jerry Potter
And the image to video doesn't speak right. It just kind of animates it Correct.
- [02:22]
Kenya Kelly
It just animates it.
- [02:23]
Jerry Potter
Yeah. Okay. I saw that photo. I think I saw you share it somewhere else. And so did it have you like waving the photo or were you like doing full on sign spinning?
- [02:32]
Kenya Kelly
No, so just right now it allowed me to bring it down. Right. So it just brought it down. But I was going to actually put like some voice text over it and use like the animated sound and see what can happen with it. But right now it's just. It's kind of. It's not simple, but it's kind of simple.
- [02:46]
Jerry Potter
Okay. I like those because I looked at some of them and they do look really, really good.
- [02:51]
Kenya Kelly
Oh, yeah.
- [02:52]
Jerry Potter
Some of these other ones where it's like, you know, use your AI voice and look like you're talking from an image. Like I did that and like my teeth are, you know, on my nose and like, they are a mess. But I think this is a great opportunity to get in and get a bunch of engagement with this because it reminds me of when you remember when Facebook first added like 3D photos from like those images and you'd scroll and be like, whoa, what just happened there? Yes, that kind of stuff. So very, very cool. They do have the Live Stories feature. They do have an generated label down there. And obviously we're still navigating the whole. At one point people are going to assume everything's AI or not, but for now, yeah, they're labeling it, which I think is great. So. All right. Another update all about lives and direct messages. So I didn't realize this until the story came out this week, but apparently you can watch TikTok lives even without a TikTok account, which is cool. So this update actually sounds really good. So tell us about the direct message activation in lives.
- [03:48]
Kenya Kelly
Yeah, so I'm pretty sure it's called Service Plus. Like, I got invited into a program with TikTok for people who are coaches and course creators, and it basically allows you to turn on this feature where when you're live, you can just click a button and a box will pop up to everyone on the live stream that says, send me a dm. You can write whatever your message is and it tells them to send the dm. Also, even if you don't hit the button, there's a little orange button on the right hand side of the screen and if they tap it, then that box will pop up. So it's a really great way for those that can't necessarily put a clickable link in their TikTok live, but you're able to get people to send you a dm. Now, there's other added features if you have a business account, but right now I've been testing it and I love it because I'm able to say, hey, send me your email in my inbox and I'll send you a link to whatever product I'm promoting. And they'll oftentimes I'll get a ton of DMs from people.
- [04:36]
Jerry Potter
Ah, I love that. That's so clever because it is one of those things. I see people comment in public forums with their email address more than they should, but most of us don't want to share that.
- [04:47]
Kenya Kelly
Yes.
- [04:47]
Jerry Potter
In a public place. And so then you just grab their email afterward and then send them whatever it is that you wanted.
- [04:53]
Kenya Kelly
Yeah, that's the, the hardest way of doing it. But if you have a business account on TikTok, then they're able to fill out a form and you've got zapier lead generation. But for those of us who have these creator accounts, then that's just an easy way to just get leads and then your assistant can go in and capture people's information.
- [05:08]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, okay. Obviously you want to keep in mind GDPR and all of that kind of stuff. You know, don't just like add somebody's name to your email list unless you've made that part clear.
- [05:18]
Kenya Kelly
But exactly.
- [05:19]
Jerry Potter
Yeah. So, all right, lots more updates we got to talk about, but if you're here, you're thinking about the future of social media marketing. Don't miss our 17th annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report. This is always so fascinating and this year is no less. It is the best resource around to determine what's working now in social, including which platforms are hot right now, how marketers plan to change the game with organic social, popular video formats, platforms, future planning, all this kind of stuff because we only have a limited amount of time and budget and so this helps you make the right decisions in your marketing. Plus, right now you can get the social media marketing industry report totally free. Go to the special link. Social mediaexaminer.com 25report okay, social media examiner.com 25report so you can grab your copy today. All right, TikTok shop update all around TikTok shop safety. So there's a few things here. First, they're expanding in some new markets like Ireland and Spain. So obviously TikTok shop is not going anywhere. But what are some of these other updates we need to know around TikTok shop?
- [06:21]
Kenya Kelly
Yeah, so they're really making it a more reliable place to purchase, because, I mean, you still have the bulk of the population, first of all, not even on TikTok, but then the ones that are there, they're not really sure what they're going to get when they purchase a product from TikTok, if it's going to be good or not. And so they're really putting more parameters, more guidelines or rules in place. And then the people who are kind of violating rules, they're already removing them off a shop. But they're also trying to help people that are there to protect their intellectual property. And they're assigning, I think they're hiring different people to help protect those that have shops and that are selling their products on TikTok.
- [06:55]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, it was unreal. They said that they have already blocked over 7 million products for breaking IP rules. Like, I don't care how big TikTok is in terms of all users, that's a huge number.
- [07:06]
Kenya Kelly
That's a lot.
- [07:07]
Jerry Potter
So. And you're right, that trust issue is obviously massive. You know, I have two younger kids and they're kind of going online, doing their own research about purchases sometimes, and they're like, hey, look, I found this. You know, 300 Lego men for $9, I'm gonna order it. And I'm like, whoa, I don't know what that site is, so.
- [07:25]
Kenya Kelly
Exactly.
- [07:26]
Jerry Potter
Yeah.
- [07:26]
Kenya Kelly
You know, like, we don't know if we're gonna get like the TEEMU type of thing or we're gonna get the target type. We don't really know. And so they're kind of like cracking down on all that.
- [07:34]
Jerry Potter
Yeah. They've also are rolling out this TikTok shop, AI Seller Assistant, which it looks like essentially you're going to be able to, you know, because sometimes you're like, am I making sales or not? That's the only analytic that you care about. But this is kind of cool. You're going to be able to go in and basically ask it questions using natural language. Like AI does. Like, you know, hey, how does this work? How do I do this? But also going in and ask it about, you know, analytics, like, how did my shop perform last week? And it'll give you more than just, hey, here's how many you sold. It'll give you all kinds of other things. I was thinking from an agency standpoint, like, how great is this to be able to give back to your clients as well? And then the last part is it will give you personalized recommendations based on individual shop activity.
- [08:17]
Kenya Kelly
I love the idea of that because you've got millions and Millions of people on TikTok and then more product based businesses are come to shop, they've got all these questions and TikTok doesn't have enough people to answer all their questions. And now they have the assistance of AI, which we all love to be able to ask AI certain types of questions. And now people can get more of what they need and they can help their clients and more what they need too. With this, that assistant.
- [08:38]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, that's huge. And I also think the thing we always have to remember, as smart as we think we might be as marketers, AI detached the algorithm and like all of that, they know more, right? They know more. They're going to be able to make those connections. So it's cool to see them innovating in this way. I know you focus on TikTok organic obviously, but you know there's value in TikTok ads and apparently TikTok is investing a bunch of money to let people sort of try ads for free. Like they're giving away $1 million in ad credits in the US to small businesses, right?
- [09:09]
Kenya Kelly
Yeah. So I've actually been trying to get myself into that program. It's basically where not only are they giving away money, but they're also, they're coaching you and teaching you and giving you actual people to talk to about what it is you're doing in your accounts. They have live events in different cities and I've been trying to get myself in there, but because I don't really sell anything, I'm kind of like, you know, on the outside of that. But if someone is a service based business or a product based business, it's an opportunity to not only partner with TikTok, get coaching by TikTok and potentially get a bunch of money that you can put towards ads. Like the program that I'm in with TikTok, it's not that program. But every time I go live with TikTok and I do their webinars, they'll give me ad credits for my live stream. And so they're trying to encourage more businesses to come to TikTok and to perform well on TikTok. And so they're teaching them and giving them money.
- [09:59]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, that they really put together like a no brainer offer. Like we'll pay for your ads and we'll show you how to run them. But it's probably a good investment on their part because once you know, if they start working, obviously keep paying and I keep paying. Yeah. If you want to learn more about that or any of that stuff that can you just mention you can go to TikTok small biz fest.com B I Z for biz TikTok small biz Fest.com all right, and then another update around ads is essentially expanding what they call promote ads DM access, which is the ability for people to directly message you. But now they can do this even if they don't have a TikTok account. So tell us what you're seeing with this. What are the details here?
- [10:40]
Kenya Kelly
Yeah, so one of the things that we, I mean people may or may not know this, but you've got people who are watching TikTok on a regular basis who don't not actually have the app on their phones. And so when a business is trying to message a person, they can't because the person doesn't have the app on the phone to get a message. But now TikTok is rolling out the ability where you can use ads to talk to people in WhatsApp or Facebook messenger. I don't really know what line or Zalo or Zalo is, but it's a really great way to do. They call it alternative messaging if you don't want to. If you can't DM someone on the platform that you're able to DM them in one of these particular apps, which is really cool.
- [11:17]
Jerry Potter
Just think about the opportunity because we all message where we message, right? Like we all probably have a platform where we get a message. We're like, oh, I gotta log into that. Yeah. So yeah, meeting people where they are is one of the most powerful things we can do as marketers, which is really, really cool.
- [11:32]
Kenya Kelly
You know, and they've been working with Manich on the back end for business accounts. I think that because they haven't officially said that out loud, but we're watching the beta. I think that that in partnership with Tik Tok is this like if they're able to run ads, do it through many chat and do DM and in the other platforms, I think a lot there's a whole lot of partnerships that are happening that are like rolling out all at one time.
- [11:52]
Jerry Potter
I saw that. And then it becomes a no brainer, right? Like that delivery piece. All of our businesses, like we have to get traffic, we have to convert people and we have to deliver what it is. And the, the more you can do that in a high leverage way, it's just huge, so.
- [12:04]
Kenya Kelly
Exactly.
- [12:05]
Jerry Potter
And then TikTok is also talking about Pulse suite ads. There's a couple of these. So one is they talk about this premium ad Placement so you can have your ads next to top performing videos and emerging trends in the highly trafficked for you feed. One is Pulse Premiere, which you can be like basically next to premium publisher content. So Disney, Warner Brothers, NFL. And you can do this during major events or year round. So before we talk about the other one, I wanted to ask you, because you're on TikTok more than I am, what do you think the value of that is? Is it a targeting thing? Like if somebody's watching Disney, they're my person so I want to be next to them? Or is it also like if somebody, you know, like Disney's making good content so I just want to be next to it because it's going to get seen a lot or you know, like psychologically, how do you look at that?
- [12:51]
Kenya Kelly
So it's multi. Because the way that they had it before is that wasn't available. It was if I had really great content, a brand is able to run ads right behind me. So you'll see content that does really well and then you'll see it says ads in 3, 2, 1. So it used to just be partnered with creator content. And so now a brand can go, hey, it's about to be. We're in the. What's that thing called? The playoffs, you know, and that's like all the content they're posting about that shot that was made that everybody's been talking about all week long. That's a great placement to put an ad next to that kind of content. And we've never been able to do that on TikTok. And so when I think about a brand, they're like, first of all, if we have people who love sports and I have tennis shoes or I have gloves or whatever, my thing is these people are prime for if my ad goes behind them. But also it's just an opportunity to be next to really, really popular stuff. It's kind of like Super Bowl Sunday. You know, most of the commercials have nothing to do with the football or whatever. You're just trying to get your eyeballs on all the people. And so I think that there's two folds. Some people are just like, I want to be right next to the NFL draft. This is my day. So on and so on.
- [13:58]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, yeah. It does make sense too that I think most businesses want to be attached to a piece of content that just made somebody real mad, right? And they're like, ugh. And then it's like, hey, come buy our product. Maybe some. Okay. And the other one is called Pulse Core. And Rather than these big brands, this is where you can essentially do the same thing except with top user generated content. And so they call it the top 4% of content across TikTok and you can do it by category and seasonal lineups and different things like that. So it's interesting, they sort of divided it by, you know, premium publisher and then just user generated stuff.
- [14:35]
Kenya Kelly
I think this is actually the fourth one because like there's Pulse and it's like if you want to put your stuff by my content, then there's the premium where it's like creators are in the top percent of content creators. So that now they're just adding more layers to what you can do with the Pulse program. And they're just saying pulse core, Pulse this, post that. And it's like it just expands.
- [14:52]
Jerry Potter
Yeah, Apology Max. Pulse is the top 4% one. So as I was looking at these two things, like right, you can be next to Disney or the NFL or you next to these other brands. I wondered if you would almost make two campaigns, like one that was like super polished.
- [15:05]
Kenya Kelly
Oh yeah.
- [15:06]
Jerry Potter
To be next to the fancy ones and then one that looks more user generated next to the other ones. Because obviously it's, I think it's one of those times where if you're watching something looks really organic and then something really commercial comes up, that's not a good pattern disrupt.
- [15:20]
Kenya Kelly
Yes.
- [15:21]
Jerry Potter
Right. You're just like, oh, this is an ad. Here we go. Yeah, so yeah, I love it. Lots of innovation going on with TikTok. Quick reminder. Get this annual social media marketing industry report. Go to social media examiner.com to five report to grab your free copy today. Again, social media examiner.com to five Report and Kenya. Where's the best place to discover more about you?
- [15:41]
Kenya Kelly
Yeah, so obviously you can find me on TikTok. I can't, Kelly, but I'm on YouTube, LinkedIn and then my podcast, the if you create it podcast.
- [15:48]
Jerry Potter
Love it. All right. And if you want to add another podcast, you're listening lineup. Got a couple for you to check out. The social media marketing podcast as well as the AI explored podcast. Until next time, may you be wise with your marketing decisions. Thanks everyone. Bye bye guys. The social media marketing talk show is a social media examiner production. For more social media Insight, visit social mediaexaminer.com.
- [16:16]
Michael Stelzner
Just a quick reminder before you go. If you're ready to become indispensable in the age of AI, the AI Business Society is your solution. Join now and secure your discounted membership by visiting social mediaexaminer.com AI I can't wait to see you inside the AI Business Society.