205. How do you create ROI from TikTok and short-form videos? (f. Dan Knowlton)
Looking for success with short-form videos and TikTok? 📱This week’s guest Dan Knowlton shares how your focus needs to be on building trust and exposure, not just leads. Phil and Lauren discover consistency, data, and engagement matter most. Join us as the secret to audience growth is revealed!
Episode transcription
Lauren
Curious about how tick tock can skyrocket your brand's reach?
Phil
Wondering how to keep your viewers hooked on your short form videos?
Lauren
Want to know the secret sauce for generating millions in trackable revenue?
Phil
Then this episode Dan Knowlton is a must listen, I like this guy. Dan is a video production and social media marketing expert who has mastered the art of using tick tock to drive ROI. That's his focus for some of the world's biggest brands.
Lauren
Get ready to level up your tic tock game and boost your marketing strategy.
Phil
Let's hit play. This conversation is one I've wanted to have for months. It's finally happening right now. And I'm legitimately excited listener for you to be here. We're talking about tick tock and I've got my two resident tick tock experts. You already know Lauren, but you don't know Dan Knowlton yet, but you're about to meet him. Dan is a great friend of mine is over in the UK, Dan and brother Lloyd create some of my favorite content. I love love when your face pops up on my feed. Dan, welcome to Brand Therapy. We're so excited to have you.
Dan
I'm excited to be here. I genuinely am. Thanks for having me. So it's gonna be good.
Phil
I am glad you're here. Because I have done something that I've never done before a podcast interview, which is prepare.
Lauren
Might I add that we're at episode 205. Right now?
phil
Yeah, I don't prepare. I don't read bios, I will occasionally type the name of who we're interviewing, not interviewing. But having a conversation with all occasionally type it into Google five seconds before I hit record and read whatever Google shows has the first sentence I'm reviewing all my secrets today. Why? I don't know. But Dan gave this amazing presentation for our Adobe Express Ambassador group all about tick tock. And it was such a refreshing new lens. If I had to sum it up, it would be the business of tick tock. And that's really setting the stage for a great discussion today. So that's why you're here, Dan, in case you didn't know why you were here.
Dan
Thank you. It's good to know while I'm here. Thanks.
Lauren
So Phil, you told me about Dan's presentation. And if I recall, there were two statements. He said that you really really liked. Yes. So what were those? Oh, you're
setting me up to say them?
Oh, I love setting you up is like this was like a performance a tag team.
Yeah, I love it. So Dan said this. Ted Talk builds trust and awareness at scale. He also said start a tick tock account today and have the best chance of discovery. I thought those were really inspiring statements. Dan, do you remember first of all saying those things? Yes. Yeah. Second of all, can you elaborate on them now?
Yeah. So I'll go with the second one first, because I just that's the last thing you said. And that's what I remember. So about discovery. And I think one thing to like set this up with is, I'm not here to convince everyone I should be on tick tock, although I talked about tick tock in this session. And I love tick tock and it's amazing. I think the thing to understand if there's certain people listening that may think about tick tock, not sure. But I'm into social media and I need to get in front of my customers, I think the thing to understand is that right now the place where you can get the most organic reach and engagement and be discovered. The easiest is in the places where you can publish short form vertical video. So tick tock is one of those that set the kind of trend of short form vertical video. But there's other places like it's the reels, YouTube shorts, Facebook reels. So this conversation where we're going to talk about tick tock, but I think it's important to understand that those places are where you can also get discovered even with a really small following. That's the great thing about tick tock, you can literally start an account today, and you have a very good chance if you try and test enough different things to reach a large audience for free without spending any money on ads.
I completely agree. Phil,
did you post like one thing and it just went mad? I remember having a conversation.
Yeah. It's funny because I'm not a tick tock content creator, at least at the time of recording this. I've dabbled. And my second attempt at dabbling went viral with over 5 million views. But for me, yeah, it resonates with me when you say I'm not trying to convince everyone to be there. Because if I had more hours in the day, I probably wouldn't be there. But I put my attention on the platforms that I enjoy creating and also consuming content on which for me is YouTube for Lauren, it's tick tock. Would you agree, Lauren, that we divide and conquer is kind of our froley because I actually I only open Tik Tok maybe once a month, just to see what I've missed is usually over 100 notifications. Usually Lauren's sending me funny memes. For me, it's just on a platform that I resonate with, like I don't I find it stressful. I go on there and I see all these things that I should be creating content on and I'm not so I find it stressful. That's how it feels even if that's not the truth, but for Lauren And Lauren loves the algorithm of TiC tock of what it serves her and how savvy that is. And so you keep going back for more, and I'm the one that said you need to start creating to fulfill this divide and conquer approach. I
feel like the TIC tock algorithm knows me better than I know myself.
I agree. Honest. Yeah.
It's pretty amazing,
I think is a good and a bad thing, though. In all seriousness, I think from a consumer point of view, I feel similar to you feel that it keeps you on there scrolling, endlessly scrolling. And I found myself just scrolling scrolling before bed, scroll, scroll, scroll, because it knows what I like better than I do. And I ended up spending lots of time on there. And I guess for me, I class it as inverted commas research. So you know, I'm a marketer, I should be consuming other people's content to get inspiration. That's why I'm on there. So
yeah, sounds good. Your publicist wrote that well done.
Yeah, but I guess to answer the other question, I think you mentioned about the other point, I said was about building awareness and trust at scale. Was that what you said,
Good memory, I was gonna read it for you again, but I don't even need.
So it was building awareness and trust at scale, I think for looking at our Tiktok journey. That's what it's helped us do. We're video on Social Media Marketing Agency we're looking to connect with we're like a b2b agency looking to connect with marketing managers from brands and things, I guess, to be transparent. One thing tick tock hasn't done as well as like LinkedIn for us is like generate leads, it's not the kind of place where we're constantly getting, you know, senior decision makers from brands saying, hey, we want to work with you, that has happened, but nowhere near as much as LinkedIn. But what Tiktok has done for us, is helped us get in front of huge audiences, and our target market as well, and build that trust and show our creativity and amongst a whole range of other things that we can go into. But that's where what tiktoks done for us, is allowed us to really try new creative approaches to creating short form vertical video content and truly understand that format, which I believe is the way forward. If you think about it, when social platforms start or giving you clues about the types of content you should create, it's kind of time to start creating that content. If you think about, like I said, YouTube shorts is the place where you can get huge amounts of organic reach and engagement Facebook rules, Instagram rules, tick tock like that is the direction or where video content is going. So even if you're listening to this thinking, I don't want to create content on tick tock, just go on there to start understanding how it works. That's like a little nugget of advice I'd give you just to really understand it.
So what do you like about tick tock?
I like I think like you've touched on it, how incredibly powerful the algorithm is, from a consumer point of view, I'm in the same boat as Phil that like, it is scary how good it is at keeping you on the platform. But then on the other side, from a marketers perspective, when marketers are trying to get Captivate and hold the attention of potential customers to ultimately try and sell them something or convince them to do something. It's an incredible platform, because it is keeping people on it, like people's attention is so focused on there. So yeah, I love it from a consumers point of view, because I enjoy spending time on there. But it's also quite scary. It's also really good to for inspiration. I think that's another angle like so, for example, we work with the like some really big well known brands that you would have heard of some of our most effective campaigns that have literally tracked millions of pounds of revenue have come from ideas we've got from random Tiktok creators that have nothing to do with the industry. Like we helped a quite a boring company that sells safety gloves to generate a million pound contract for a campaign that we got an idea from like a tick tock or so it's just so good for coming up with creative ideas. That's another reason I love it.
I love that. Yeah, I found with our clients who want to get on tick tock that they just post they post, but you can tell very, very clearly that they don't spend any time on the platform themselves. Because I firmly believe that tick tock has a culture of its own. And even like the millennial pause that everyone talks about, I see some of our clients where they'll hold up the camera, and it'll be almost three seconds of them just smiling, breathing, and talking. And I know I know, as soon as I seen that, that they've not spend time in the platform. So I'm so glad that you brought that up because I think that's that spending time in Tech Talk is probably the number one most important part of creating on Tiktok. Yeah,
and you make a really good point about the like saying that they don't quite understand it with the pause at the start and stuff like we joke that like with tick tock content is so fast paced, people are scrolling so much you almost need to like confuse the viewer by changing up for so much that they just keep watching it because it's such a fast paced platform like with our content, our pod clips and things and our clients content. It's like every two to three seconds something needs to be changing on the screen, punching in like zooming in zooming out, and changing the angle adding something vision on screen, so the viewer, their brain is constantly stimulated with a new thing, anything, anything, anything, and it sounds crazy, but that is what the platform is like. That's what keeps people watching the video. Another little tip actually, that's really important is captions like subtitles. So a really sneaky way of keeping people watching your video is to ensure that when you're adding subtitles to your videos, you're only each time they're being shown. It's only like one to two words on screen. So it's changing very quickly, rather than, like long, you know, like you'd see in like a kind of YouTube style video where it's a very long thing that you read along with like that, if you keep it's a short one or two words, that was something that's constantly changing on the screen. And I've caught myself, like just, I'm just watching this video continuously, because the words are changing, and my brain likes to see new words, it sounds mental, but
that's such a good tap. That's so brilliant. You know, Phil mentioned in his list of questions that he prepared. That was about two years before you had your own viral posts. So how did you avoid giving up until that point? That's
a really good point. I think, firstly, from looking at the direction that social platforms were going in. To me, it was really clear, like with the rise of when Snapchat came out, and completely changed the way that social platforms work without a newsfeed and like with a swipe up, down left or right kind of user interface, or I got into Snapchat early on and saw that and thought, like how incredibly immersive the platform is the vertical video that it's not like a small thing on a screen that you're scrolling past. So from that point, I was like, wow, this is a crazily clever way to make to create a more immersive experience for people consuming content, especially on mobile devices, right? Because lots of the most people are consuming stuff on mobile devices. So first of all, it was like believing in the format, I guess, believing in short form vertical video. And secondly, it was like seeing the small signs that things were going in the right direction. I think like in the presentation, Phil mentioned, I shared my journey of here's how many kinds of views and likes and engagement I got in year one and year two, and year three or whatever. And for the first year, it wasn't a huge amount. But you see those gradual, you know, after 50 videos, one video got in the 10s of 1000s of views. After like 80 videos, we got in the hundreds of 1000s. These aren't the exact kind of riffing here. But it's it was around that kind of figure. So it was it was those signs of like seeing along that journey. If I would have just had flat views and engagement and traction for like a year, I would have thought, hmm, something's not right here or, you know, not in for a year, like even for a month or so like, if I was changing things up, and it was continuing to not work, I think I would not continue. But as it was going in that direction. That was something that kept me going, I
guess, how many times a day do you post I,
like I mentioned for us like LinkedIn is the place where we drive most new business and my responsibility and our business as CMO is to manage our marketing and our sales for the company. So a lot of my time is spent on LinkedIn. And we're incredibly busy at the moment, we're just about to do one of our biggest shoots over for a big kind of drinks company. And I've kind of been looking at my time and resource allocation. And I find me spending less time on tick tock recently, just because LinkedIn is like my focus. So currently, probably posting a couple of times a week three or four, maybe I need to look at it. Previously, when I was like all in and I was absolutely smashing it, it was probably five to 10 times a week, doing a whole range of things. But at the moment, I guess I've kind of like slowed down a bit because because like Phil was saying it's so difficult to be everywhere. And
it's smart. Well, you've already highlighted the merits of the platform independent of even posting, which is just being there to research and get inspired with an example of how that turned into over a million pounds of products sold. Amazing. But also you've highlighted how priorities can shift. And we need to give ourselves permission. It's kind of funny, because your tone is like, you're like, Well, we're having a conversation about tick tock, so I kind of feel bad admitting that I'm only on there for a few times a week. I'm happy. You're admitting it, because I hear you talking about your focus on LinkedIn for me to focus on YouTube. Because for me, I really enjoy creating videos with brands. And honestly, it's lucrative. And it's an easy way for us to work and to create something that we're proud of. And so that's great, though, it's great that that has shifted and that you've identified that. I don't think anyone ever needs to feel guilt around not being on a platform as much as before. I guess
what I am still integrating it with what I was saying about LinkedIn. We recently posted one of our most successful kind of semi viral videos on LinkedIn. And that was a few weeks ago. Now, the idea of that video came from a video I saw on Tik Tok, where the balances is like comparing to spending time on a platform and consuming to posting my posting has gone down a lot, but I'm still getting huge value from that inspiration side, like probably every day I'm on Tik Tok and getting ideas and things. So the people that are listening is trying to figure out and understand the value of Tik Tok and where you can I get value from from the platform. I think the one that everyone can, which I said earlier is just understanding how short form vertical video works. If you work in the marketing world, and you want to understand how to get better results from social media, definitely understand. And I suppose you could do that from looking at YouTube shorts, or Facebook reels, or Insta reels. tiktoks Another great one. But really understanding that is one of the ways you can get value. And creating content is the best way to understand the platform. But that's how I learned. And even our, even our marketing manager that we hired here, she's got a really amazing business and a tick tock account kind of selling scrunchies and things that like hair scrunchies. And she's growing that and, like she learned a lot about the platform through doing that, like I think the best way to learn about any platform is by actually and you're gonna start out in your cons, it's gonna look rubbish, and it's gonna not look perfect, but it's just you learn by doing, don't you like you guys know this? Yeah.
I love that Instagram has been mentioned probably the least in any conversation we've ever had about social media. I love that we're talking about tick tock and I love that we're talking about LinkedIn. I feel like we need to have you back to talk about a whole episode about LinkedIn, because you're doing a great job of incorporating visuals on LinkedIn through like document uploads, I guess it's called almost like the LinkedIn version of carousels on Instagram. Yeah,
that's something we've been trying then like to put especially for our podcast, business anchors as well, we've been trying last week, like we're always just trying different things, some things absolutely flop. Or like, you know, you might look and say, Oh, that's only got a few 1000 views. And you know, but then you try something. And that's the thing with with Tik Tok as well, to have success with Tic Toc, there's two things you need to do consistency, and testing. If you consistently test enough different things, something is going to work, like and that's literally how we did it consistently tried and test enough variety of content, and looked at the data and learn what was working, what wasn't working. And that's another thing we've ticked up, I keep going on one little nugget, is the analytics are amazing. Like on Tiktok Analytics, you can literally it's got a retention graph for each of your tiktoks. So you can hold your finger over the video, like 60 seconds each second, you can see where viewers have dropped off. So again, it can give you amazing insights into like, is there a part of you when you're on tick tock, you kind of go on a bit or waffle on or you slow down and people are dropping off? And you can really learn from those individual like that graph, or you can move your finger. It's just yeah, it's just really good.
What metrics do you think matter the most is views the number one most important metric.
It's a really good point, I think I've spoken a lot about views. And I said this one in the presentation that I did with Phil, views are driven by engagement, I put more more value is on engagement. Like if you're getting millions of views, and no one's engaging with your content, that doesn't mean a lot because people you know, that's just like going and shouting in the street. No one's gonna care about engagement, I put more value on but you only get decent views when you get a decent amount of engagement. It's also important not to get hung up on the numbers as well, this is another point, because I had a couple of videos that did really well. And you almost then start chasing those numbers. And also, it's important to understand that if you're just creating funny cat videos, but your business is selling water bottles, that's not aligned, you need to really make sure that the content you're creating is helping you achieve whatever objective you want to achieve. Maybe your objective is to just get in front of as many people as possible. And that strategy might work. But if you're a business, and you're trying to sell a product or service, your content needs to kind of filter back into what you're trying to achieve. Also
something you need to remember when you're creating content, let's say you've got that alignment with the content you're creating in a particular niche or industry and audience. Don't size yourself up against another creator who might have started earlier than you or has a bigger audience than you, I find myself doing that. I'm like, Oh, I wish this had more views. But it's like wait a second, the video that I made is actually for a very specific audience. The intention isn't really virality or millions of people watching that video. In this case, it might be a handful. Well, one person watching it going actually, I want to hire Phil to do my personal brand. That's a win. And sometimes I have to remind myself that
Yeah, exactly right. Like, the way you measure the success of any piece of content depends on what the objective is, like, we've got a similar thing where we produce he's going back to LinkedIn, I love LinkedIn, we produce these kind of really creative entertaining, fun sketches and skits that are kind of fun and entertaining, get get huge reach and engagement, because they're really fun and interesting to consume. Then we'll create like a case study where it's a really good like, like the million pound case study of you said, we're like, we've done something amazing, like share it in a creative way, doesn't get anywhere near the amount of reach and engagement. But the impact of that reach and engagement is at a way deeper level in terms of convincing potential customers to become a customer. Like then seeing an example of us delivering a million pound contract for a customer is going to convince them to become a customer then like a funny video, do you not I mean, so you're exactly right. I completely agree. Each piece of content has a different objective. And you don't just want to measure success by the way How to Use an engagement. Yeah, really agree with that?
Is there a type of engagement that you think is most important? I personally think
that whatever engagement requires the user to make the most effort, I hold the most value again. So for example, like a like, let's give example a like, you tap the little heart icon, minimal effort, I'd probably put the least amount of value on a light because it's just such low effort. Something like a someone doing a duet on Tik Tok, where they've got, they've seen your video, or your tick tock, and they're dueting, like doing their own one minute or three minute video, commenting on your tick tock, they've made that effort to get themselves in front of cap, like, I'd hold huge amount of value on that, compared to the like, and there's obviously levels that there's commenting and stitching and various other things. I guess that's my kind of logical approach to thinking about it. But yeah, I don't know, what do you guys think what like for free for your engagement and stuff? What do you hold value on and
they try to decide on one that is my main objective for each post and actually spell it out. So I think for me in the position of agitating people as a way of showing authority and is trying to stay top of mind, as the person to call when someone needs a brand or when someone needs help positioning their brand. I like saves, whether someone actually goes back and what they've looked at and saved. That's another issue. I don't know how many people actually go back and look at their saves. Although they may remember that Phil Pallen talked about this thing that he does when he travels, and they may want to reference it later. But for me, it's less about them referencing it later. And it's more about the compounding effect of someone noting me as a resource to them as me staying top of mind to them as an expert, as someone reliable as someone trustworthy. So I typically
thought of it like that, yes. A really good way thinking about it, isn't it? Yeah, that's why
I usually go after saves because of the compounding effect. Yeah, obviously, shares are great, because shares puts you in front of a brand new audience. That's probably you're gonna say, right, Lauren,
I think you're rightful that for me, it depends on the type of content style that I'm creating, like, sometimes I'll try to ruffle some feathers. And for something like that, shares are great, because it's controversial.
So our comments, comments are great. From my comments. From my perspective. Yeah, looking at the hilarious comments that you get when you ruffle feathers. Yeah.
Yeah, I just got a good one this morning. I got one the other day where someone was like, Well, what if I burned her house on fire? And I'm like, joke's on you. I live in Vancouver, and I'll never be able to afford a house. I didn't say I didn't say that. Oh, I would say for me, generally, because I post on book talk, like it's all about books. Saves are really great, because it shows that whatever I'm recommending is something where someone's like, I'm going to try to read that later. So that is probably the most important like
validation almost in what you're creating. Yeah,
yeah, exactly, that the recommendations I'm making are either good enough on their own, or the way that I'm presenting it is valuable enough that someone is adding it to their like, you know, tick tock cart, if you will. So I would say saves, but comments are also really really awesome. I love when there are actual discussions and debates on whether a book was good if the ending was great if people liked a certain character, things like that. Can I just
share one example on top of that you might be think of Lauren about report like on tick tock an example of a client that we're working with. One of the most effective things we found to do with engagement is replying to comments. And even like the kind of crappy ones as well, like can you can be a bit witty and fun. So we we work in this company called cameo apples, if any wants to see just search cameo apples on Tik Tok, and we started a tic tock account in January. And since January, we help them get over 10 million views 15,000 new followers and tons and tons of engagement online and one of the most effective approaches we found was finding people that were adding maybe sometimes controversial comments and doing like a witty video reply with a trending sound. So I'll give you an example we did someone comments that this wasn't really rude or anything, so don't worry, but they commented like basically calling a counter for being a scam. They're like your name's cameo apples, you're not actually a real apple, you don't even sell apples kind of thing. It's like a company that grows at a UK brand of Apple, literally the UAE and so we did a reply so you can reply to their comments or the comment shows up in the video. And we did like basically a video reply showing us going into like one of the top UK supermarkets and picking up the apples that were selling and we were like, showing them that and it got like crazy amounts of views and stuff online. That's that's one and we we consistently found that that type that style of engagement, got crazy amounts of views when when we basically engage with commenters and reply with a video it works really really well. I
freakin love that you know one of my favorite creators right now. You is someone who basically says that she can find anyone online even if the person is like anonymous on Tik Tok? And so people comment or like, I bet you can't find me. And then she'll reply to the video and do a masterclass finding, showing how she found that person, though this is in your inbox right now with like, 100 different people. But there's one that she posted the other day where the guy only had two videos, one was like, have his dog in the front seat of his truck. And another one was like a live concert that he went to no indication of where he lives. Like there was no name, no nothing. And like he had his profile picture was his truck, too. And somehow, this lady ended up finding out his first name, his last name, his wife's name and his birthday, all from that she was like, oh, JD, you think that you can't be found because you have a profile picture? Well, let me show you what I did. And then she goes through all the steps. And it has like, millions of views. I left a comment and that comment alone has over 5000 likes. And it's just the engagement is unbelievable. So I'm so glad you brought that up. Because it's really, really fun to watch as well. Yeah,
we'll find a link to that and put it in the notes of the podcast. By the way, even though both of you did a really beautiful descriptive job and audio form of your tic TOCs.
Great. Is there anything else you think people should know about tick tock, even just
to round it off? I knew by the way, we talked more than just about tech talk. I knew that was gonna happen. But yeah, maybe just leave us with some parting advice. My
parting advice is if you work in the world of marketing, especially social media marketing, join a platform that has short form vertical video on it, whether it's tick tock, whether it's YouTube shorts, whether it's Facebook, whether it's the reals, spend time on that platform, just consuming and learning. Like I said, some of the most value we get, and I get from Tik Tok and other short form vertical platforms, is getting ideas for content. And there's just yeah, there's some amazing examples of how people create like the captions tip I gave earlier. Like I learned that from tick tock. Like everything I'm talking about, I've learned from tick tock because there's just some really creative people on there producing content that keeps you engaged in a really clever way. Like I've even seen people dangling little kind of hooks are like, Oh, I'm going to reveal this thing. And then hold on, and then they keep going. And then they reveal it at the end. Like you there's just so many little nuggets that you get from just consuming content. So that'll be my number one piece of advice. I'm not here to tell you that you must be on tick tock, but you must understand short form vertical video. So start spending time on one of those platforms I've mentioned and start understanding the types of content that are on
there. Where can people get more of you and follow along? I'm on Tik Tok,
just my name Dan Olson, also on LinkedIn and I do a podcast as well with my brother called Business anchors. Just go to business anchors dot inc. And you'll find us on there every week we sit down and share lessons we're learning from growing our Social Media Marketing Agency and running campaigns for clients and that kind of thing. And we've actually done a whole episode on short form vertical video. We did that last year sometime I think. But yeah, on my social platforms, just search my name Dan Knowlton, or a company named Nelson. Amazing,
amazing and so insightful tic toc and everything else we talked about. Thank you so much for hanging out with us on brand therapy.
Oh, thanks for having me.
That was awesome. My two tic toc resident experts. I learned a lot. Thank you, Dan. That was awesome. Listen listener if you also enjoyed this episode, make sure you give us a review. Five Star five star that helps other people discover this podcast that we work hard to create. And you know how it works. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Thank you so much for hanging out with us right here on brand therapy. See you then.
