← Social Media Marketing Talk Show
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- [00:01]
A
If you're like many marketers, last year was very challenging, but this year doesn't have to be that way. Napoleon Hill said, the starting point of all achievement is desire. If you want to improve your know how, your results and your career prospects, then Social Media Marketing World is your solution. It's the place where smart marketers go to get new ideas and strategies that actually work. Get your tickets at social media marketing world.info and secure your future. I hope to see you there.
- [00:39]
B
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 basically explore the crazy month around TikTok, but also other important updates marketers need to know about the platform, including the trend signals that are happening on TikTok right now, so you can use them to shape your own content to perform better. Also, an easier way to schedule posts and a really important update for anyone using TikTok shop. All right, my name is Jerry Potter, host of the Social Media Marketing Talk show 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. She's also host of the Kenya Kelly podcast. Kenya, welcome to the show.
- [01:24]
C
Hey, Jerry. So excited to be here. Be back.
- [01:26]
B
So first we got to talk about it. TikTok all of a sudden went dark for, I don't know, seven minutes or whatever it was, and now it's back for at least 75 days. But they're obviously acting as they always have, like it's not going anywhere. They rolled out this new Explore Discover tab, kind of like Instagram has. So what are your feelings? Just about, you know, before we get into some of the news updates, what are your feelings about kind of what's going on and what we should expect for the next 60 days or however many are left?
- [01:52]
C
Yeah, for sure. So one of the things, like, I've been saying this since, like, forever, because I'm like, obviously I don't work for tikt, but I'm like, I'm a strategic thinker, you know, So I kind of said to myself, I felt like on January 19th that the platform was gonna go down, but not for the reasons that we think. I think that they had to make a massive update. Something had to happen, and in order for that to happen, we couldn't be operating on phones. But anyway, right now I think that what is happening is that they are working with whomever, the real buyers that are gonna be with the 5050 split that President Trump is saying that he wants to determine what it's gonna look like for the US and so on the platform right now, obviously you cannot download TikTok, you cannot update the platform because it's not in the app stores. But TikTok is working like nothing ever happened. There were so many things happening, even on January 19th events, just so much that that was happening in a good way, as if TikTok wasn't going anywhere. So people on the platform are understanding the value of diversifying their content. But like millions of people have come over to TikTok even the more since everything has kind of gone down well.
- [02:57]
B
From a marketing standpoint, if you want people to want something even more, take it away, Take it away. Right? And doesn't matter if you're talking about a toddler or a senior citizen. So it was very interesting just to watch how the whole thing played out. And obviously it generated a lot of talk too. So it'll be interesting to see where things go going forward. But I think for a lot of us, we are looking at it with caution. But obviously if you're already doing things and it's working, then you're gonna continue to do that. So let's talk about what's next. 2025 trend report. I love it when the platforms do this because obviously we, you know, there's songs, there's trending music, there's, there's trends. But this is like overall stuff that is I always see as a reflection of what humans are enjoying on the platform. So what did you see in there that we can utilize in our content?
- [03:41]
C
For sure. So one of the things that we know with TikTok and with social media in general is that companies are learning how do we create, not, not just create content, but how do we sell what we sell, how do we connect with our audiences? And TikTok is basically telling the world, hey, here is what's working right now on TikTok and what's going to happen in 2025. And so they had the three different kind of like talking points, which is Brand Fusion, Identity, Osmosis and Creative Catalyst. And the way that I kind of looked at this is like we are already seeing like, I feel like TikTok is such a. It's like a groundbreaking. It's setting the tone for what social media marketing looks like and what they have been doing in the past and they're going to be doing more this year is they are making sure that they are very intentional about. Like here's who creators are, here's what they're doing, here's what their cultures are, here's what's happening on the platform from the creator standpoint. And they are teaching marketers how to fuse what their agenda is and what they're doing with what is happening in the world and culture and with creators. And they're teaching them all the different behind the scenes ways of not just selling a product or marketing on TikTok, but how to actually position their brand to work right alongside with what is happening, happening on TikTok and with social media in a way that helps businesses with their ultimate goals, which is revenue and things of that nature.
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B
Well, and you know, even the words they used, brand fusion, where you are able to attach yourself to something that is already happening.
- [05:10]
C
Correct.
- [05:11]
B
Is so powerful. It always has been. Because you know when you're talking about something nobody is familiar with, there's that extra layer of friction. And so when I worked as a radio personality for years and we hosted morning shows, it was just like I loved the holidays because you could talk about the holidays and do all your content around that. People already knew that, which is really great. And I also love the part about identity. I think this is, it's always been part of social media marketing. But people, you know, they, they did this big study years ago about why people share and four of the top five reasons are all about identity. I'm like this, I want to connect with other people like this and things like that. So.
- [05:43]
C
For sure. Exactly.
- [05:44]
B
Yeah, it's been very interesting. All right. As if the last month hasn't been crazy enough around TikTok, marketing in general could be tough. It's not getting easier, but there is an easier way. Getting great results doesn't have to be hard if you have the right strategies. And I want to invite you to get an all access ticket to social media marketing world because with this you're going to be able to discover new strategies that improve your marketing results, fortify your marketing plans for 2025 and beyond, become more valuable to your company or to your clients. I know Kenya's going to be there talking about TikTok shop and she's always great to talk to people outside of her talk too about all these different things that are going on. So you can go to SocialMediaMarketing World to get your ticket today. Again, social media marketing world. And we'll see you there starting March 30th. All right, post scheduling. One of our favorite things as marketers, anything we can do to kind of cut down on the workload. And now there is a new way to schedule posts on TikTok. So what's happening with this?
- [06:40]
C
Yeah, so I'm very excited about this. So TikTok now has the additional app of TikTok called TikTok Studio, which is going to allow you to schedule content from a mobile app. Because what has been is that you could never schedule for mobile. You could only schedule from desktop. But now they have rolled out TikTok Studio once it's available in the App Store, and marketers are going to be able to schedule their content via mobile. So it has access to the sounds and to every single thing that the regular mobile app has access to. You're going to have access to that on TikTok studio. Now, I hope that they just use it with the regular app, but as of right now, it is a separate app for you to be able to schedule content so you can just focus on running your business.
- [07:21]
B
Yeah. And I would love to see them maybe take a page from YouTube, because YouTube has the YouTube app and then they have the YouTube Studio app. And so often as a marketer, I'm like, okay, which one of these can I do in which one? You know, so that'll be interesting to see. But obviously anything that we can use to schedule and save time is great. So is your understanding that this is available outside of the US but not here yet?
- [07:45]
C
Yeah, because it was available previously. I never downloaded it to my phone because I didn't need it at the time. But. But they were encouraging us to download TikTok Studio for a while, but I don't think that we were getting the hint that we needed to download it. And so we're like, oh, shoot, you know, so. Yeah, for sure.
- [08:01]
B
Yeah. And now that the scheduling's there, obviously, that's huge.
- [08:05]
C
Exactly.
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B
Okay. We were just talking about aligning our brands with things that are already going on calendar wise, cultural wise. And I love that TikTok put out this special asset to help brands with this. So what is this asset and how can you see using this?
- [08:21]
C
Yeah, so it's the marketing calendar, and it's basically telling you not just here's what's happening in the U.S. but here's what's happening globally. Right. Because we recognize, like, you know, if you're in America, we typically focus on what's happening in America, but when you are utilizing a platform like TikTok and, you know, people across cultures, and even if it is America, people are in their own cultural celebrations. Like a member of our team is celebrating Chinese New Year, right? And that may not be a huge thing that we're celebrating right now in America, but TikTok is saying, hey, here is what's happening globally and here is the calendar for all those things. And I feel like it's really helping businesses marketers to really plan their year more effectively and not just in the bubble of like maybe whatever country that they're in, but they can utilize. This is what's happening. And here's how you can create. Because TikTok is very intentional with like whatever time of the year it is, whatever's being celebrated, it is being celebrated on TikTok in a grand way. And they're trying to set that, that not just the tone, but they're trying to teach business owners, here's what you can do and here's the calendar to do it with.
- [09:26]
B
I was talking to one marketer about this kind of stuff and like, you mentioned Chinese New Year and they're like, well, I don't know anything about Chinese New Year, right? And then it's like, okay, well then like learn something and then share what you've learned and be upfront about it, right? You don't have to show up as a Chinese New Year expert. Like, that vulnerability is probably going to perform better anyway, so. And I also love that it's small business focus. It does feel like for all the platforms, a lot of stuff is related targeting creators, let's say. And so the fact that this is small business focused is great. It does require an opt in. So you do have to put in your information. But if you want to find it, the link is clunky, but if you search for 2025 SMB marketing calendar, it came right up for me if you do that. All right, some creative updates on TikTok, starting with what TikTok calls the AI self. So what is this thing that we're seeing? I know we don't know everything about it yet, but what are you seeing around this so far?
- [10:17]
C
So they've actually, they were pushing it to us. Like, was it the end of year? I think it was the end of last year or beginning of this year, probably the end of last year, where they were telling us to AI ourselves, to click this button and we could upload a picture and then it's created or upload a couple pictures and it created an AI like avatar of us. It kind of reminds me of what the AI avatar that meta has and what they're kind of doing there. And so TikTok is really encouraging us to utilize this tool in case we want to create AI versions of ourselves. I think that this is positioning for all the AI generated content that gets put up on TikTok as videos or. I don't know, I think there's more to the story, but this is the initial, is our ability to turn ourselves into an AI avatar.
- [10:59]
B
Okay. And it says you upload three to 10 photos and then you can generate up to 30 unique avatars reflecting your facial features. So it's crazy where all of this is going. And then they of course have all kinds of effects and everything else that, you know, all the platforms have now. And then this other update, I'm actually kind of excited about this one, it's the AI meme maker. And again, this is just something that's kind of been spotted at this point. But what do we know about this so far?
- [11:26]
C
Yeah, so this reminds me of something that TikTok was doing last summer, where they were, there was a feature where you could create your own memes. And so as of right now, we're kind of trying to figure out if this is going to be all photo based, is going to be image based. And right now it looks like that this is where you're going to be able to create a meme out of whatever photo that you upload. It could be yourself or it could be something else. But we were talking earlier, I really think that this is going to be. Because when we create videos on TikTok, a lot of times we like to add in GIFs and all that type of stuff in the mix of our content. And I think that this is positioning for us to create our own GIFs, GIFs or as ourselves, but I'm not quite sure.
- [12:05]
B
Well, that's what I love about it. You know, we think about all the ways to use AI. We all know how well memes can do. We all know, like we talked about the stuff that's based around identity gets shared and so the ability to, you know, use the cleverness of whatever. I don't know if TikTok's AI runs on OpenAI or what, but use that cleverness along with your own image, you know, whether it's you or a product or, you know, anything like that. Like, I just, I think about when I used to do a lot of stuff with restaurant clients when I worked at an agency, like, if I could take one of their beautiful photos of food and have them turn it into a meme, like, how well would that Do.
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C
Yeah, exactly.
- [12:41]
B
I mean, you know, we'll see. It might be terrible, but it's going to be awesome.
- [12:45]
C
They do good stuff. It's just kind of clunky, always at first.
- [12:47]
B
Yeah. So one of the things that a lot of people were surprised by when TikTok went down for that eight hours or whatever was that Cap Cut and all the other things that bytedance owns went away as well. It's back now. I've also seen people getting frustrated as capcut, I think, is charging more than they used to or, you know, locking more features down as paid. So I do like seeing when TikTok makes updates to their video editor, the native one that's built in. So what are we seeing added to this that we can take advantage of?
- [13:14]
C
Yeah. So it looks like with this they're saying that you're able to do more digital avatars auto captions. Like, I saw where it. Like when I was editing my videos recently on TikTok, I was like, I thought I was in Cap and I had to like, take a step back and go like, wait, you are in TikTok? And I was like, oh, man. So it's kind of like some of the exact same features and fonts and like, transitions with captions are heavily being pushed on the inside of the TikTok platform, not on that. Like, transitions. Like, it reminds me of like maybe 2020 or 2018 version of CAP Cut, where they're really trying to kind of get there and it has, you know, more commercial sounds and things of that nature. So I don't really know. I think maybe they're trying to create a separation between TikTok and cap cut. But it looks very similar to what you can do in Cap Cut is currently happening on the inside of TikTok to where I keep thinking that I'm in Cap Cut.
- [14:07]
B
Well, and you mentioned, you know, the importance of all the people you can reach around the world and, you know, diversity around these different things. And so I love. Well, first of all, as marketers, the fact that there's a more of a commercial music library. Like, you know, thank you for that. But there's also AI dubbing and they're even touting their digital avatars to be able to essentially create more diverse content as well.
- [14:29]
C
Yeah.
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B
You know, so if you're at an agency or a business or whatever, where it's all, I assume, all one race now, you have an opportunity to create more stuff around that, which is helpful. Yeah. So that'll be interesting. So I wanted to look it up so Kenya, speaking at Social Media Marketing World here starting on March 30, and your talk is called Crush youh Product Sales how to use TikTok shop to sell More Products. And I know you've been raving about TikTok shop, especially the last year.
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C
Yeah.
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B
But we've got some, some updates around this one of them, which is a pretty major shift for anyone selling physical products. So what is this change here that they're just announced?
- [15:02]
C
Yeah, for sure. So it used to be where if you had products that you sold on TikTok and then people said that they wanted a refund, typically TikTok was going to eat the refund cost, but now they're saying that we're not doing that anymore and they're going to be put the shipp for the shipping. Sorry. They're going to be pushing that onto the person that owns the actual shop, which makes sense to me.
- [15:20]
B
Yeah. Not surprising. I think it's one of those things where once you have it, you're like, what? But then you think about the fact that you got it for free all this time.
- [15:28]
C
Yeah, for sure. That's a lot of money.
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B
Yeah. And I would think this is the point where as brands you maybe start to have to rethink your guarantees and return policy and stuff like that, but.
- [15:40]
C
Oh, for sure.
- [15:41]
B
I don't know. All the data I see though about guarantees, return policy. Like in almost every situation, assuming you have a good product, the amount of additional sales you'll make versus the downside of refunds and things like that is almost always, you know, in favor of being more generous with your guarantees.
- [15:58]
C
Oh yeah, for sure. And I think that because the amount of people that are shopping on TikTok shop more than ever, it's gone from here to here. Right. It's just. There's just a lot that is happening and the amount of people that are purchasing and returning like, you know, it's kind of like you go to a store like a Target, you buy, you can return. So they're being more smart and because they have to consider they're getting ready to be sold halfway with another company. So there's a lot of factors at play, I think. So we can only see this much, but I think there's a whole lot happening in the back end.
- [16:28]
B
Now, I've never bought anything on Tick Tock. I've been inspired to buy things from Tick Tock. But does it save your payment information and everything? So it's like assuming you don't have to choose a size, it's like one click. Okay. Oh, that's dangerous.
- [16:39]
C
It's very. I don't go into shop unless I really need something. Like, I just bought mouth tape, but I love my mouth tape from them, but otherwise, I stay out.
- [16:47]
B
Oh, we got to talk about that after the show. All right, so let's talk about. Also with TikTok shop now, more AI tools to make paid campaigns even easier. And they've been rolling these out over the last six, eight months around this. So what's the latest on that with the. What they call the GMV Max?
- [17:04]
C
You know, I didn't really understand that part. I was like, let me just. Let me revert to Jerry on this. I didn't really get that part too much.
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B
Well, I mean, it's basically automating campaign management. And we're seeing this on the other platforms, too, certainly from Meta. YouTube has talked a little bit about this kind of stuff. And they, you know, they claim that in the uk, where they started rolling this out, it cut setup time for campaigns in half.
- [17:25]
C
Oh.
- [17:26]
B
So essentially, it automatically will create and handle targeting, bidding, creative selection, you know, all of this kind of stuff. And then you basically go in and choose what your ROI targets are, you know, to go with your business goals. But I think we're in this weird place. I remember it's probably been. It's probably been seven years ago now or something like that. The first time I remember on Facebook, they were like, we'll find an audience for you. Right, Right. And, you know, I was an agency. I was managing all these different things, and I'm like, okay, you find an audience for me. Let's. Let's see what happened. And it was awful. It was a disaster. I mean, it got a ton of reach and it got a ton of engagement, but it was all the wrong people. It was that it was a plastic surgeon client, and it was supposed to be this body positive image for women that they were trying to attract. And so the client chose a woman in a swimsuit that was a little more, you know, full figured compared to, like, magazine standards. And it blew up with pervy comments from guys all over the place. And we were like, okay, well, we're never using that again. But we all know, and I know you and I mostly play on the organic side, but we all know that AI has gotten so much better. And most of the people I talk to, you know, some of the experts we have on the show that do the paid side, say, oh, my gosh, it can be so, so good. So it'll be interesting to see how this goes. All worth testing though, as with everything, so. All right, quick reminder. Get all of the latest by joining us for Social Media Marketing World. You can get an AI track ticket, a virtual ticket, or come see us in person in San Diego. Just go to Social mediamarketing World, Social Media Marketing World and Kenya. Where is the best place to discover more about you?
- [19:03]
C
Yes, you guys can find me on Instagram TikTok @Kenya Kelly and then I have a podcast. It's called the Kenya Kelly Podcast. We're changing it to the if you create it podcast, but you'll learn all about social media marketing with me there.
- [19:15]
B
Fun name. All right. And a couple of other podcasts for you to add to your listening lineup. 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.
- [19:26]
C
Bye bye.
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B
The Social Media Marketing Talk show is a Social Media examiner production. For more social media insight, visit social mediaexaminer.com.
- [19:42]
A
Make 2025 your best year ever. Grab your discount tickets to Social Media Marketing World right now by visiting social media marketing world.info.