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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 pending TikTok ban in the US some amazing AI updates and TikTok shop is expanding and growing even more. All right, Interestingly enough, there are several updates that do not sound like they're coming from a company facing a shutdown in one of its biggest countries of users. So my name is Jerry Potter, host of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a Social Media examiner production where we break down the latest social media news and what it means for marketers like you. All right, so ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has requested what they're calling an emergency pause on the U.S. law requiring selling the social network by January 19th. So now that we're here in late December, it's like, oh, that's soon. And then this just came out. The Supreme Court here in the US is going to hear arguments on the matter on January 10th. So TikTok said, hey, can you just pause this ban? They said, no, but we'll listen to you on the 10th, which is of course nine days before the ban goes into effect. Meanwhile, in Canada, TikTok has been asked to wind down their operations in the country. They have not blocked it or anything like that. TikTok is of course fighting that as well. So I think the main thing to think about for all of us as marketers and especially those of us that are doing it for clients, I think if it were me, I would be keeping my current strategy right now because this might turn out to be nothing or it might just turn out to be a whole bunch of press coverage, which makes TikTok even bigger. So I would continue as is. But certainly if you haven't yet, I would start diversifying my posting. Take some of your best performing content because through short form videos can go so many places now. Be super easy to get them out in other places. But I think the biggest opportunity here for the right brands. This won't be for everybody, but I think there's an opportunity here to start a narrative and you could start using this to grow your other platform. So if you have a brand or it's your brand on TikTok and you've got this great big loyal following, imagine the impact if you started actually talking about it. Like, we don't know, is TikTok going to be banned? We don't want to lose touch with you. We love you. Come follow us on Instagram or come subscribe on YouTube or something like that. And that way, even if it never happens, you've already got a head start on some of these other platforms. I was thinking about this too. I put on my agency hat when I used to work at an agency and it's like, would I tell my clients about this? And I think I would reach out to clients and just subtly say, hey, don't worry, we've got a plan. Let us know if you want more details. And I feel like most of them would be like, that's fine, I trust you. But without getting into a whole big thing about it. All right, there's some other news from TikTok that definitely feels like they're not expecting to be banned. We'll fill you in on that here in just a second. But as we approach the end of 2024, it's a great time to reflect on your marketing plans for the year. Just take a second. Were you as successful as you had hoped? Do you wish you could get access to the biggest marketing breakthroughs of 2025 so you can make that your best year ever? I want to invite you to join us in San Diego for three days of cutting edge social marketing strategies and leading AI training. When you come to Social Media Marketing World, no fluff. This is just real actionable insights you can apply right away. You can discover why thousands of marketers consider Social Media Marketing World their go to resource for the latest marketing strategies. Get your all access ticket today. Just go to social mediamarketing world again. Social mediamarketing world. Well, if TikTok is thinking, oh, we're going to get banned in the US on January 19, I don't think they would be doing this. They just filed two trademarks here in the US for TikTok Go and TikTok Pay Later. So let me tell you what these are. TikTok Go is a potential app that would be designed to help businesses with marketing and advertising. So this would be a separate app, it looks like, to create marketing materials, develop financial projections for marketing investments, provide marketing advice, technical consulting, all of this different stuff and then TikTok pay later. This is going to be a potential service that would allow users to make purchases and pay for them in installments. So it's kind of like a credit service to buy stuff through TikTok. Now there is a service called Pay later available in TikTok shop in the Philippines right now. They say this would go even further. The US version might even include features like credit and debit card readers and in store transaction support. So imagine walking into a department store and paying with your TikTok account in the same way that you would with your Apple Pay or your bank card or anything like that. All right, couple of new creative tools to know about. One is on the paid side and one is on the organic side. So first on the paid side, Symphony Creative Studio is expanding. We told you about this the last time we did an episode about TikTok. And it's an AI powered video generation tool from TikTok designed to help advertisers easily create effective video ads. Now we're seeing a lot of AI video stuff really in the last couple of weeks too from Google, Gemini and Sora. But the social platforms like Meta's, videogen looks amazing, but it's not available yet. This is available. And so the whole idea is that you can go in there and a few things you'll be able to do is generate and remix videos. So you can take your product info or even put in a URL for your product page from your website and it'll turn into a TikTok style video with licensed assets. They have avatar videos where you can use AI avatars, either stock or custom to narrate videos, enhancing personalization and global reach. And then they also have an ability to generate an avatar, a custom avatar of a brand's intellectual property or spokespeople. This is where things are going to get really interesting I think over the next decade. You know, for some longtime brands where they've had the certain spokesperson, either they've aged or they have perhaps replaced them with somebody younger. You know, different things like that. Essentially going forward they're going to be able to create these ones based on real people or create one that doesn't currently exist. Also the ability to translate and dub videos. So video voiceovers can be changed into multiple languages with lip syncing, so the lips still match as the person is speaking the other language. Video editors, all kinds of different stuff. So it's even got a tool that they're calling Daily Video Generations, where if you are part of this in the Symphony, in Creative Symphony it will generate automatically video options tailored to your brand every single day. So you would just kind of go in and go, yep, post it or change this and then post it. So it's crazy where things are going. This is why I'm so excited about the AI track and all the AI sessions at Social Media Marketing World coming up at the end of March. All right, and then coming soon to Symphony Creative Studio, what they're calling refresh videos. Easily create variations of existing videos by adjusting elements like scripts and music. So imagine, you know, sometimes we repost our best videos. Imagine being able to just go in and use AI to go, all right, let's change this up, put it out there again. That would be a huge time saver with something that already worked, or if you wanted to, a B test. And then also you'll be able to generate custom scripts tailored to your brand. This isn't surprising considering all. All we've seen with this in AI Tools in the last couple years, but nice that they've included it. So that is on the paid side with paid ads. Is that Creative Symphony. Wait, let me get the name right. Cause they're very similar, these two names. This one is called Symphony Creative Studio. Okay. Meanwhile, on the organic side, it's called TikTok Studio, which is replacing Creator Center Beta, but Now it's just TikTok studio. And this is now available for creators on desktop. And essentially it's designed to help us all do our jobs easier. So it is providing analytics, inspiration, monetization, education, and more all in one place. It also has a new thing they're calling unlimited sounds. So if you have ever faced a copyright violation or had your videos muted because of the song that you used, now they have a lot more sounds that have no restrictions on them and shouldn't ever have any restrictions on them. So. So that should be Great. All right, TikTok's 2024 year in review, what it looks like. You know, if you were to identify one thing this year on TikTok, it was TikTok shop, just explosive growth. The report highlights significant growth both in user engagement and business success. They say over 170 million Americans participated in the platform's billion strong global community. Remember, we've been hearing a lot with the, with all of the stuff going on with the potential ban, but they saw major growth in e commerce with TikTok shop live sessions nearly tripling monthly in the U.S. okay, so if I'm interpreting this correctly, that means however big it was in January, it was triple in February and Then March was triple what it was in February and then April was triple what it was in March. So just massive growth. TikTok Shop has now launched in Spain and TikTok is testing an affiliate integration with Amazon Target Impact, which is a big affiliate platform that a lot of brands work with and a whole lot more. And this is essentially going to allow creators to link directly to the products without having to leave the app using their affiliate link. So if you are a brand that uses affiliates, this is an incredible opportunity. Even if you could just get your influencers or your brands to use this instead of something that sends them out, the conversion rate goes up, you and the influencer or creator both win, right? So that's massive. This is similar to what we've been seeing on YouTube. YouTube is my primary platform and every time it's like, hey, link to these things. You can link to these things and we can sell them right here on YouTube. The algorithm on what they think my channel's about hasn't quite, you know, because they're like, look, recommend dish soap and lipstick. And I'm like, that's not really what my channel's about. But, but thank you for that. So the feature is right now being tested with select creators. You may not see it right now, but it just seems like a no brainer once they've built the infrastructure for it. So we'll see what happens with that. All right, quick reminder. Learn more about an all access ticket, a virtual ticket, or the all new AI track ticket to Social Media Marketing World. Just go to SocialMediaMarketing World, right? Easy to remember. Go there today. SocialMediaMarketing World. If you like this podcast, you want to add a couple others to your listening lineup too. Free to check out the Social Media Marketing Podcast or the AI Explored podcast. Both available wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time. May you be wise with your marketing decisions. Thanks everyone. Bye. The Social Media Marketing Talk show is a social Media examiner production. For more social media Insight, visit social.