Blake: [00:00:00] on the podcast today, I have Brian Bosche who is here to talk all things tick tock. He's the first person to come on here and strictly discuss this with us about tech. So Brian, how are you doing today?

[00:00:10] Brian: [00:00:10] Doing well, Blake, thanks for having me. I am

[00:00:12] Blake: [00:00:12] super excited selfishly because I need to learn more about tick tock.

[00:00:16] My, my fan ship is really, really low and I do not get a lot of views, so I'm excited to learn how I can flip that around and I'm sure that the audience is going to do just the same, but before we get into it, I do want to get a little bit of context on you. Just basically your background. If you could give us a snapshot of your career so far, where you got started and how you got to where you are

[00:00:36] Brian: [00:00:36] now.

[00:00:37] Sure. So right now I'm on the product team at Smartsheet, which is a collaborative work management tool. it's a public company used by tens of thousands of different companies to help them manage their workflows and really managed our work as a team. And my company, my startup actually was acquired by Smartsheet last year.

[00:00:54] So I was previously the CEO and co founder of a company called slope, and we really made it easy for creative teams to manage their work. So we largely focused on content review and approval, so images, videos, photography, design, and that's really where I got to know more about the creative field, where I worked with lots of different marketing creative teams or trying out.

[00:01:15] Any new channel that would come up that we're trying to, you know, deploy their social media strategies at scale. So that's what really got me interested in tech talk when it first launched, is a lot of the customers that I work with and help build products for. I started asking questions about tick talk and how do we do this vertical video and how do we take advantage of this new channel.

[00:01:32]so I've always really been interested in the marketing creative world. I'd even run a video production company previous to, to slope. so yeah, this is a really exciting space for me. And if

[00:01:41] Blake: [00:01:41] I were to ask you what you think professional superpower is, what would you say?

[00:01:45] Brian: [00:01:45] creative workflows. so, you know, for the last eight years, I have.

[00:01:51] Worked really deep with marketing creative teams, helping them manage, you know, anything from, how do you request a project to planning it out to assigning. So going through the entire feedback and review and approval process all the way to getting something published. So, really the expertise on how companies, teams, people should, Build out their creative workflows. Well,

[00:02:13] Blake: [00:02:13] let's, let's dive into it as it pertains to tick tock then. So for anyone that's not using it currently, can you give an idea of what makes it different from what's already out there. Sure.

[00:02:23] Brian: [00:02:23] So tech talk is really powerful for brands and also for individuals or really anyone that's trying it out, because it gives you so much engagement and reach with no following.

[00:02:33] So I'm sure many of you have been on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter for years, and engagement's really tough. You know, I've had a Twitter for the last 10 years at 10,000 followers. I'm lucky to get a few likes, you know, they engagement is pretty low. And then once you actually. A tweet, something, it's gone, you know, within hours.

[00:02:50]so it's really hard to get that engagement and really hard, you know, on Instagram to get hundreds of thousands of likes. If you have 500 followers, we're on, tick-tock, you can literally have your first video published, get to a million views. So it really a, is a powerful channel because it gives you that engagement and reach without having to establish that following and really rewards great content over someone who's famous or someone who has a huge following.

[00:03:17] Blake: [00:03:17] Well, we'll, we'll definitely build up to that point of getting a million views by, let's start out here with just the framework of ideated content. Is there a good way to come up with ideas of what to post.

[00:03:30] Brian: [00:03:30] Yeah. So is actually great for that because it has, kind of that discover page, where you can go and it will actually show you the trending hashtags.

[00:03:38] It'll show you the trending songs. So I kind of like to think of them as a daily challenge where it'll show you like the top three or four hashtags for the day. And you know today it's, it's, it's st Patrick's day. So it's hashtag wish me luck hashtag make me a drink hashtag video call. Cause a lot of people are working from home.

[00:03:56] So you can start to see what other people are creating along those hashtags. And what types of content are doing well matched with the audio. And you can, you know, make your own video in whatever niche you have or whatever specialty you actually have on TechTalk to kind of fit within that trend with your own angle on it or your own no brand on it.

[00:04:15]so it's actually, it's, it's much easier to brainstorm concept for tech talk than other channels because it kind of gives you those trends built in.

[00:04:24] Blake: [00:04:24] Interesting. So it's, it's almost like on this platform, it's better to just look at what already is built out and exists. Then come up with your own original ideas.

[00:04:33] Like on LinkedIn for example, you don't really have any context. It's just like post something. But with, with tech talk, it's basically giving you the formula for how to succeed.

[00:04:42] Brian: [00:04:42] Yeah. And it actually rewards you for that. So when I do something that's on trend with one of the hashtags or with a trending song.

[00:04:49]it almost always does better, and that's anecdotal evidence, but, you know, it is pretty apparent when you use them. Kind of a recent song that has just been released. you can see your view count really go up as compared to using something, that isn't trending or hashtag that isn't trending.

[00:05:04] Now, I will say all of this with, you should figure out what, yeah. Kind of what your brand is on tech talk or what your niches that you want to fill. So when I first started producing videos, I didn't know what to bring as I was just playing around with tech talk. I didn't really know what I was doing. So I do like a travel video.

[00:05:18] I would do like a funny reaction video. You do a lip sync, you know, you try all this stuff and it just kind of falls flat. Once I committed to producing videos around creative tips and photography tips and creative insights, that's really when my following started to take off because it gave people a reason to follow.

[00:05:35] And then any of those trends that came up, I could match too. A creative tip or creative workflow or whatever I was actually doing. as a part of my account.

[00:05:44] Blake: [00:05:44] Yeah. That, that brings me to my next question because it's pretty common, like you said, to get more views and likes than you have followers on your account right now because it's like content deficient platform per se.

[00:05:55] They're, they're just so many people that are on there, but not enough creating content. So it's being rewarded heavily when you do so you can get more likes and views, but at the same time it's, you still have to. Yeah, I've found at least it's a lot easier to get those likes and views than it is to actually convert them into followers.

[00:06:12] So. How can you actually optimize around getting more fans?

[00:06:17] Brian: [00:06:17] Yeah, it is. The fans versus views is really interesting because. You can have hundreds of followers and have a million view video. I have 250,000 followers, and if I produce a video that's not great, I'll get no low thousands of views. So even with my follower count that high, tick-tock, really pushes your content to new audiences.

[00:06:39] I found mostly. So it gives you analytics. If you go on kind of the pro mode, and I can see from most of my videos, the people watching it are not my followers. I think having that follower base gets you a boost, so it'll send it to more people to actually see if it's something that they want to spread more.

[00:06:54]as a part of that algorithm. But, but you know, you still get rewarded for the content itself being great and being something that people engage with. So I would think the best way to kind of build your following is to have that reason why someone would follow you. So that is a doubling down on whatever you, your topics that you're really interested on, what you, what you want your brand to be.

[00:07:14]so if someone sees a photography tip, I have. And they go to my account with that profile visit and they see, Oh, this person does a lot of photography tips. This person, there's a lot of creative tips or this person, there's a lot of travel or this person does make up, or this person does this. They know what to expect from your content and they'll follow you so that they can keep engaging with that.

[00:07:32] That's interesting to that. If it's just random content all over the place and there's no reason to actually follow you, they might just like it, think it's funny and move on to the next

[00:07:39] Blake: [00:07:39] person. Yeah. The one question that I r...

How to Start and Grow on TikTok w/ Brian Bosche