There are around 400 million active users right now spending about 80 minutes a day on TikTok. As a business owner, garnering a huge number of TikTok followers would certainly be beneficial to your scaling your venture. But it is not just about churning out countless videos of you dancing or doing silly things. It is about turning yourself into a reliable thought leader. Adrienne Hill sits down with TikTok coach Samantha Vlasceanu to discuss her five pillars of consistently producing educational content for TikTok. She also shares some practical tips on writing your bio, video editing, and content repurposing.

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Hello, everyone. I am so excited about this interview. I am with the lovely, Samantha Vlasceanu, the TikTok coach. She is on a mission to convince businesses and brands that TikTok is not just for teenagers, and dancing is not required. When COVID-19 hit, her other business had to shut down. She had to pivot fast, and TikTok is where she found her home. That's when she realized that she'd been organically reaching her audience on TikTok all along. She realized the power TikTok could have for businesses if they gave it a chance.

Fast forward to now, Sam works with marketing agencies, coaches, lawyers, corporate brands, you name it. Sam ensures all of her clients are using the app with intention as a sales funnel in finding their target audience, coaching the strategies of converting their followers into actual paying clients, because that's what it's all about. Of course, we could not have this event without Sam. Welcome, Sam. I'm so excited you're here with us.

Thanks, Adrienne, for having me.

I know TikTok started it all with the short-form video. Prior to TikTok, all we had was stories which were hot, people loved stories, but TikTok brought it to a whole new level. It brought in an element of fun that a lot of people felt like they were missing. Even when Instagram came on the scene and they brought in reels, and then they tried to push reels to Facebook, there are a lot of people that still want to hang out on TikTok. It's like the OG of the fun short-form video and everyone loves it. Before we dive into all things TikTok, which I'm super excited about, could you tell us a little bit more about your story and how you found yourself carving out this interesting niche of making TikTok your home, and how that all unfolded for you?

When I first started, this is by accident. I did this whole business. I never thought I was going to be a coach. I was in the corporate world for ten years, didn't love it. When I got laid off, I was like, "I'm going to start my first business." It was in travel industry in 2019. One year later, COVID happened, and it wasn't the greatest idea to be in the travel industry at a time. When I had to shut down, no business was coming in, and I felt like the only entrepreneur that couldn't pivot through all that, I turned to TikTok as a way to distract myself from the bad that was happening in my life. I saw the good of what TikTok had to offer in terms of the creativity of the content creators on there.

I was being educated on a daily basis. I was learning and I was being able to be inspired and laughing when I most needed it. I was like, TikTok has a huge potential right now, but there's a huge stigma that it's only for kids and teenagers. Imagine once businesses start getting the hang of this, how much money they can make off this platform. I decided to be faster than the algorithm myself, understand how the whole platform works, and then fast forward two years later, I'm a TikTok coach.

You started throwing content out there, seeing what would stick following the trends, and learning yourself. I'm interested because you were in the travel industry and my heart goes out to you because that died, it was not happening. Fail. Now it's back big, but that's years later. Clearly, you had to choose some other niche, something that you were going to become known for. When you first started putting content out there, where were you driving your traffic to? Were you just building followers in general?

It was to my traveling business. I was starting to get sales that way. That's when the business started asking me, "How did I do that? How did I grow my following so fast on such a different platform?" On Instagram, I'm stuck around 2,000 followers, and that's been 7 months later down the road. On TikTok, I grew that to 100,000 in 3 months. The explosiveness of one platform where your content's reaching your ideal audience over and over again was so powerful as opposed to Instagram's, your content's going out to the same audience over and over again.

Contents on TikTok reach your ideal audience over and over again. This is more powerful than Instagram where you only reach the same audience.

The algorithms are set up totally differently. I've heard from multiple people, it's so much easier to grow your following on TikTok. Being a TikTok user myself, I feel like there are way more comments and way more engagement in general on TikTok than any other platform. Any other platform, people want to watch, but not engage. On TikTok, they're actively engaging. It's a fun place to be.

The quality of engagement is definitely very different. Mind you, Instagram reels is still fairly new. It's only been around for less than two years, I would say.

Only in the last six months have they been pushing it I think. I know they beta-test everything, so small little pockets of audiences get it over time. It's interesting. Even when the travel industry was struggling, you were still getting sales because of TikTok.

Because of TikTok, yeah. That's when the light bulb moment hit. TikTok can have a huge advantage if businesses start jumping on now before their competition jumps on. We look at Instagram. Every single coach is on Instagram. We look at the product-based business, every single product-based business is on Instagram. Marketers, sales guru, they're all on Instagram. If you had an opportunity to restart it all over again and have the opportunity monopolize platform before the competition jumps on, this is now. It was TikTok. It still is toward TikTok for many industries.

In a lot of ways, it's a blue ocean. It's not overly saturated. It's not full of people. I think there are still a lot of people who, in their mind, it's for teenagers, it's for dancing, it's not for business. The few people who are using it for business are cleaning up, which is incredible.

Do you serve over 30 year olds?

Yeah, absolutely.

Is that your ideal audience that you wanted to hit that over 30-year-olds? Not the 20-year-olds, not the teenagers. The over 30-year-olds on TikTok, there are about 400 million active users right now on there, spending 82 minutes a day on TikTok. That's almost a whole movie every single day, this audience. Your audience is on TikTok. The viewer's audience is also on TikTok. They're absorbing content from other people right now and not yours. That's a huge issue for 82 minutes.

TikTok Followers: There are about 400 million active users in TikTok right now spending 82 minutes a day on the platform.

That is almost a whole movie every single day.

That's a lot.

That's a long time.

If you put out a video or a training or a webinar that was two hours long, no one would watch it. Yet people are happy to binge-watch 82 minutes worth of short-form video.

Short-form videos tailored for them.

Yeah, which is fascinating. Take us through a little bit of, some of our audience is new to TikTok, and I know a lot of those tuning in, maybe they even use TikTok, but they don't use it for business themselves, they're more of a consumer. Maybe they haven't even realized quite how they would pivot into making TikTok a profitable tool for them. Take us through a little bit of your early journey. When you first started sharing content and speeding the algorithm and learning things, what were some of your biggest a-ha moments that would be helpful for the audience to realize like, "I can make money on TikTok."

I usually divide my content up into five pillars. These five pillars will always add value to my audience. Either you're doing an educational content, entertaining content, inspirational content, or timely news. You're talking about something that's currently happening around the world and tying it back to your own niche or your industry. The fifth one is an engagement post where you're asking our audience for their feedback and their opinions.

For example, one of my videos, I asked them, "Tell me, do you do what people do when they ask you to do a call to action? Do you do the call to action or do you ignore that call to action?" It's me asking my audience on their feedback on that. If you are doing 1 of the 5, you're adding value to your audience. The promotional content, that's more self-serving, and that's okay. We just don't want to be selling because you don't want people to feel like if they're following you, I'm getting ads coming my way.

Is the promotional content 1 of those 5?

The promotional content is more of a self-serving content. It's not part of the five, but I would sprinkle in the promotional content once in a while, but not over and over again.

It's like the icing on the cake. The cake itself, you're giving value the vast majority of the time.

Exactly. Again, remember, TikTok is a social media app. It's a two-way conversation. You're nurturing your audience. You're not selling over and over again because they're not going to buy. They just keep seeing you sell those out.

TikTok is a social media app. It is a two-way conversation. You must nurture your audience and not just sell to them.

No one is interested in a profile that is basically selling. They'll leave quickly. Super smart pillar strategy. I love that. It's simple and it's easy to follow. Do you have a certain strategy that you use as far as your link in your profile of where you link people to?

When it comes to your bio, you only get about 80 characters. Unlike Instagram, you're able to write almost like a chapter on your bio, whereas TikTok, you can write a sentence. There's not much. You want to be very strategic when it comes to your bio. I want you to include three things, who you are and who you specifically serve.

You need your audience to know who you've masterly helped. That does not mean you're excluding people outside your audience. It's just telling your audience who you can help. It's a way to hook your audience in. The second thing to include in your bio is why people should follow. Are you going to offer to them if they decide to follow? The third thing is a call to action. Something simple like, "Follow for more" until you get to that 1,000 mark until you get to that "Link in bio" for your account.

When it comes to your link itself, here's something I tell all my clients, and I think you guys should all write this down. Do not use Linktree. Do not use a third-party website like Linktree, Milkshake, any of that. The reason behind that is because you're sending traffic to a third-party platform and not your website. If you are looking to be ranked highly on Google, you need people to go to your website. I want you guys to all create a mock version of a Linktree on your own domain page. You guys can all take a look at mine on Instagram and see how that looks. You're keeping your traffic on your website, it looks like Link Tree, and you give them three to five options where they want to go.

That's super smart because I did very much the same thing. I was like, "I could create my own Linktree looking page. I don't have to use Linktree." I know there are different types of accounts a person can have. They can have a business account or a creator account. What type of account would you recommend for someone who's wanting to make money using the platform?

My clients are split between the two. My question back to you is if you're deciding what account you should have, ask yourself what kind of videos are you creating? Are you creating videos where you're more like a talking head, you're talking and you have music playing in the background? Are you the one that loves the music? You want to be doing some of those trends, the challenges on TikTok? If that is the case, you're going to want to go with the creator account.

The business account is very limited in terms of the music options that you have available, unfortunately, but the business account has some pros to it. You get the URL link early on even with zero followers. You are also in a different algorithm stage. What I mean by that is TikTok will send out 70% creator content, 30% business content. You're in a very less competitive field against the creator account in terms of your account being shown. The last thing is, if you don't need the music, you just want the background music, then you can go with a business account because then you can also run ads down the road if that's similar to you.

It's interesting. I did not realize that in terms of what shows up in your feed, it's 70% creator, 30% business. That's like a part of their base algorithm, it sounds like.

Yeah.

On one hand, you could look at that and say, "I don't want to only show up 30% of the time." On the other hand, there's less competition.

A lot less competition. Think of it as TikTok, probably 80% of people are on creator account.

You have a pretty good likelihood of showing up as one of the top creators in that business niche if you're putting out good content, like following the five pillars as you suggested?

I know in the beginning, it's a lot harder for people who are like, "I can't even use this music. I don't even have access to it. You do find workarounds around it and you find ways to work with what you have as long as you add value to your audience.

TikTok Followers: At first, it could be harder for TikTok creators

to use different kinds of music. Eventually, you find ways to work

around it as long as you add value to your audience.

How important is it to create the content directly inside of TikTok versus creating it in some other app, and then uploading it into it?

I probably will be disagreeing with a lot of TikTok coaches out there. I don't like creating my content in TikTok. It's easier. If you'd want to create your content in TikTok, it's a lot easier. The reason why I don't like creating my content in TikTok for a couple reason is 1) Your quality is very compressed. Think about it this way, you record a video on your camera phone at 100%. Now you're uploading to TikTok, now it's at 70%. You then have to remove the watermark to then repost it onto Instagram reels, so now you're at 50%. By the time you upload it to reels, it's like 40%.

It's grainier and compressed along the way. You need your video to be on par with all the other videos on TikTok. If you were to film in TikTok, your quality instead of starting at 100% will now be starting at 70%. That's why I always suggest to film outside of TikTok. This is a lot easier when you go with my process, but if you do need to use a sound, you need to hear the beat of the music, then yeah, I'll film in TikTok. That's when I'll film in TikTok. You can see the difference in quality as well.

Have you noticed a difference in terms of how the algorithm picks up your content between the two or if it's good content, it's going to hit no matter what?

I film in TikTok if I have to use some features in TikTok. TikTok appreciates it when you do use features in TikTok because I know it's an original video for sure because you're using some special effect, you're using the green screen, you're using the music, etc. to film in TikTok. I don't think it's absolutely more favorable. Maybe it's a couple of points more favorable, but I don't think it's 50% more favorable.

Especially if you're in that business creator account where there's less competition, if you have good content, if it's made on a different app and then imported into TikTok, it sounds like that's fine to do.

Yeah.

If you're going to take the time to make a TikTok, why not clean it up and repurpose it as a reel? What's your favorite app to do that, just out of curiosity?

I use InShot. This is my favorite video editing app. There's a free version of it. That way I keep the original file on my phone and now repurpose it to TikTok, to YouTube Short, to Pinterest, to Instagram reels without having to compromise the quality of the video. The text itself, I would always suggest to everyone to always add it in the native platform you're using. The reason behind that is because if you're adding the text in TikTok, the platform, TikTok will be able to pick up those words and keywords you're using in the video itself. The moment that you upload a video that already has text on it, it sees it as a video, but it won't be able to pick up the words they're using and won't see the metadata of it.

TikTok Followers: If you add text to your videos in TikTok, the platform

will pick them up.

It can't put it in front of all the right audiences if it doesn't know what's there, basically.

Essentially, yeah. It's a video they see, not a video with captions or a video with text overlay.

Already so much goodness and so many questions. I'm asking all the most frequently asked questions I get about TikTok as well, so this is super helpful. I know a lot of people are like, "I can create a business account. I can do that. I can follow five pillars, I can do that." To make a lot of money, do I have to do the super popular? Do I have to dance? Do I have to use certain audios? Do I have to do things that I don't want to do? Do you have to go viral to make money?

No, you just have to be a thought leader. What I mean by that? All my clients, I'll say 80% of my clients are coaches, lawyers, doctors, and financial advisors. All of those individuals, none of them are dancing. Some of them want to dance because they enjoy that aspect, but know you do not need to dance. Remember, my clients are over 40-plus usually. When you come on to TikTok, I want you to teach one-tenth of your knowledge. This is the method that I use with my clients to make sure that they are converting. If you show up as a thought leader, people will be able to want to work with you. If you can describe their pain points better than they can, they will automatically assume you have the answer for them.

What I mean by that is creating educational content is key here. I want you to create about 60% of your content focus on educational. If you are someone like me who's a little nervous with video marketing when I was first getting started, I want you to follow this format and write this down. You're going to start off with your hook, then you're going to have a bridge between your hook and your main subject, then your main subject, then you're going to have a simple example, then you're going to go with an alternative solution, the outcome, and call to action. Can I give you an example of how this whole thing will work?

Yes, please.

Each part is just one sentence. For example, if I was to go, "Reels is the worst thing to ever happen." That is my hook for my audience. They go, "What is she saying that for?"

"Wait, what? Say that again?"

Now, I got them to watch the video. I then go into my bridge. "I know what you guys are thinking that you heard the reels is the best thing, but this is what I don't understand. If you're focused on reels, you're not focused on connecting with your ideal audience. An alternative solution to this is to focus on Instagram's DM side because that is a huge power that IG has that no other social media platform has. If you do this, you'll see a 30% conversion, which is my outcome." I'll then do my call to action, "Follow to learn more tips on converting on social media." The hook, the bridge, main subject, alternative solution, outcome, and call to action.

Have you seen a good conversion on the call to action there? Do you get a lot of followers with these types of videos?

Yeah.

That's a super easy formula that any of us can follow.

A lot of us, we're all experts here.

If you're following this formula, if you're brand new and you're starting your channel and you're finding your followers and getting your groove, how many times a day do you recommend that people post this type of stuff?

A lot of TikTok coaches will say, "You got to post 3 to 10 times a day in order to grow your account."

That's overwhelming.

That is overwhelming. Second of all, that's not sustainable for many of us. The third thing I want you to remember is most of those TikTok coaches are talking to influencers and content creators who literally their job is to spend hours on this platform. My clients, which are you guys, are business owners. We're spending 10% of our time on TikTok, which is part of our whole marketing strategy. We have other things on the go. Instead of focusing on trying to post three videos a day, I want you to be consistent. Frequency is less important than consistency, but quality is king.

I want you to be able to commit to posting 5 a week, 7 a week. That's essentially one a day. You're not making a video every single day, but I want you to do a batching. Write this down. This is the work I normally typically do as well. Day one, you are doing the research on the 6 to 10 videos you're going to be doing. You're going to write down your little script, highlight the key points you're going to be talking about, and then figure out the format that you're going to put it in. Day two is when I'm going to block off in my calendar for 3 hours to film 6 to 10 videos. Day three is when I'm going to edit all 6 to 10 videos and I'm going to post one a day for the next 2 weeks.

It's a simple, repeatable three-step process. Each time you go through these 3 steps, you have enough content for about 2 weeks.

About two weeks. The idea here is, as humans, repetition is a lot easier for us than trying to do everything all at once. If you are going to try and do scripting to research, to then filming, to then editing all in one day, you're going to feel burnt out. Especially since video marketing is not a trained skill that many of us are born with.

With six days a month, you can be full of content.

Six days a month, yeah.

Three days gives you two weeks, another three days, another two weeks. You have a whole month worth of content in about six days.

Typically, once you get better at it, once you get in the groove of things, you shouldn't be spending more than 9 hours every 2 weeks on TikTok, which is about 30 minutes a day.

I can see how if you have a repeatable system or a repeatable process, a certain way that you fill out these scripts a certain way that you hit these pillars. That makes everything easier because instead of going through decision fatigue of, "What am I going to talk about now? There is no decision fatigue. You just follow the process and follow the steps. Make it easy on yourself.

Make it easy on yourself. Work smarter, not harder. I'm a lazy coach, so I'll give you all my tips and tricks to make sure that you don't work so hard on a platform that's already so overwhelming.

I love that message because I think for a while in the industry, there was this prevailing message that was like hustle culture is where it was at." Every day, I am hustling and I'm working so hard. That always turned me off so much. It's so refreshing to me, other coaches like you who are like, "Let's work smarter, not harder. I don't want to hustle myself to death 24/7. There's a better way to do this."

You mean you didn't quit your 9:00 to 5:00, so you've worked 24/7?

You didn't quit your job, so you could put yourself in a little prison of like, "I accidentally hate my business." No more hustle culture, which is what I love about what you teach and how you teach it, which is amazing. Super helpful. We have the five pillars. We talked about how to structure and batch things out. We talked about sharing educational content and how to hook them and how to get them to listen. Many great and actionable tips.

I know for a lot of us, we're thinking, "I'm realizing now I need to get into this platform because not only can I grow my followers faster, I can repurpose those short-form videos over on Instagram as a reel. I can show up better in more places with this, but the devil's in the details. How exactly do I batch? How exactly do I get started? How exactly do I do all these things?" I know you have a free gift for our audience that could help them to dig deeper and figure out the how a little bit more. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Basically, I brain-dumped as much as I can into my A to Z ultimate guide of getting you started on TikTok. Understanding what did you mean for us to first get started, your hashtags, who you should be following, how to setup your account, what content to produce, and how to produce those contents much easier. It's my A to Z guide, ultimate word vomit for you guys in the PDF format. Grab a copy. Adrienne has a link for you.

That is such a wonderful gift. Thank you. I'm going to scoop it up. I'm one of those people that love TikTok. I've never had time for it, but this is the year that I'm going to make time for it. I love it. It's fun. I'm a huge fan of systematizing work, so I can't wait to dig into your freebie, pick your brain, and work with you. I'll connect with you on the side too. Super excited about TikTok and bringing this amazing value to our audience in easy bite-sized pieces. Thank you so much for all of your guidance for us today. I so appreciate it.

Thanks, guys. Jump onto TikTok. We missed the boat for 2009 and Instagram. Don't miss the boat in 2022 for Instagram and TikTok.

It's hot. The boat has not left yet. You need to get on it. Don't wait.

Important Links 

• https://www.TheTikTokCoach.ca/Connect

• https://Workshop.TheTikTokCoach.ca/Calendar

• A to Z ultimate guide of getting you started on TikTok

• Freebie Audience Explosion

• https://www.Facebook.com/Groups/6.Figure.Strategy

About Samantha Vlasceanu

Samantha Vlasceaunu, The TikTok Coach, is on a mission to convince businesses and brands that TikTok is not just for our teenagers (and no dancing required)! When COVID-19 hit, her other traveling business had to shut down and she had to pivot - FAST.

That’s when she realized that she’d been organically reaching her audience on TikTok all along and realized the power TIkTok could have for businesses if they gave them a chance. Fast forward to today, Sam works with marketing agencies, coaches, lawyers, corporate Brands - you name it! Sam ensures all her clients are using the app with intention as a sales funnel in finding their target audience and coaching the strategies of converting their followers into ACTUAL paying clients.