We kick off 'TikTok' month with this livestream version of the July 1st episode of the Smarter Business Podcast, featuring Todd Clouser the Lead Brand Marketing Manager of Refine Labs.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/refine-labs/
https://www.tiktok.com/@todd_clouser
Some of the videos Todd and I discuss:
https://www.tiktok.com/@todd_clouser/video/7070228076461935914?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7023767810343454214
https://www.tiktok.com/@todd_clouser/video/7106467293831515438?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7023767810343454214
https://www.tiktok.com/@todd_clouser/video/7113932281613405482?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7023767810343454214
Primal Branding - https://amzn.to/3uiJqjQ
Catch every episode - http://smarterbusinesspodcast.com/
________________
SUBSCRIBE - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJkvh8iqYZcIIUjEaIm_rw/?sub_confirmation=1
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/vidwheel/
_______________
https://vidwheel.com/creator-network
If you had to create an engaging, professional marketing video for your business today, could you pull it off?
If you’re like many consultants and other business professionals, you’d probably feel completely overwhelmed.
Even finding a starting point might seem impossible.
And that’s frustrating, because you know if you want to grow your business, video is an essential part of your marketing, sales, and communications strategies.
What you don’t know, though, is how to easily create marketing videos that:
❓ Strengthen your brand
❓ Establish your authority, and
❓ Make people want to do business with you.
That’s the problem we help solve with the vidwheel Creator Network.
What is the vidwheel Creator Network? It’s a community where entrepreneurs and consultants representing all industries can come together to master the simple steps to stabilize and grow your business through video.
From strategy to audio and lighting, staging, preparation, to feeling 100% natural in front of the camera, the vidwheel Creator Network is where you can learn it all.
It is a supportive, energizing place to learn, share feedback, and grow alongside a community of professionals a lot like you!
Our affordable membership package even includes a done-for-you equipment kit. A video studio-in-a-box for your home or office.
We’ve curated these kits for simplicity, versatility, and video creation power.
No guesswork. No bins full of equipment you bought but didn’t need.
It’s the trifecta of video mastery:
✅ Right training
✅ Right equipment
✅ Right community
If this sounds like what you’ve been looking for, please take a moment to check out the vidwheel Creator Network at https://vidwheel.com/creator-network/.
We kick off 'TikTok' month with this livestream version of the July 1st episode of the Smarter Business Podcast, featuring Todd Clouser the Lead Brand Marketing Manager of Refine Labs.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/refine-labs/
https://www.tiktok.com/@todd_clouser
Some of the videos Todd and I discuss:
https://www.tiktok.com/@todd_clouser/video/7070228076461935914?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7023767810343454214
https://www.tiktok.com/@todd_clouser/video/7106467293831515438?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7023767810343454214
https://www.tiktok.com/@todd_clouser/video/7113932281613405482?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7023767810343454214
Primal Branding - https://amzn.to/3uiJqjQ
Catch every episode - http://smarterbusinesspodcast.com/
________________
SUBSCRIBE - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJkvh8iqYZcIIUjEaIm_rw/?sub_confirmation=1
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/vidwheel/
_______________
https://vidwheel.com/creator-network
If you had to create an engaging, professional marketing video for your business today, could you pull it off?
If you’re like many consultants and other business professionals, you’d probably feel completely overwhelmed.
Even finding a starting point might seem impossible.
And that’s frustrating, because you know if you want to grow your business, video is an essential part of your marketing, sales, and communications strategies.
What you don’t know, though, is how to easily create marketing videos that:
❓ Strengthen your brand
❓ Establish your authority, and
❓ Make people want to do business with you.
That’s the problem we help solve with the vidwheel Creator Network.
What is the vidwheel Creator Network? It’s a community where entrepreneurs and consultants representing all industries can come together to master the simple steps to stabilize and grow your business through video.
From strategy to audio and lighting, staging, preparation, to feeling 100% natural in front of the camera, the vidwheel Creator Network is where you can learn it all.
It is a supportive, energizing place to learn, share feedback, and grow alongside a community of professionals a lot like you!
Our affordable membership package even includes a done-for-you equipment kit. A video studio-in-a-box for your home or office.
We’ve curated these kits for simplicity, versatility, and video creation power.
No guesswork. No bins full of equipment you bought but didn’t need.
It’s the trifecta of video mastery:
✅ Right training
✅ Right equipment
✅ Right community
If this sounds like what you’ve been looking for, please take a moment to check out the vidwheel Creator Network at https://vidwheel.com/creator-network/.
Hello all. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Smarter Business Podcast. If you missed the livestream version, you missed me completely botch this intro to episode 44, featuring Todd Clouser of Refine Labs. This episode is titled TikTok for Business 101 and that's exactly what we talk about. If you like the content today, like, subscribe, tell your friends about this episode. I would like to introduce Todd Klauser of refined labs. Um, we are going to talk TikTok today. Todd, it's great to have you sorry for the botched intro and sorry to everybody else out there. Um, the rest of the episode will run smoothly. So Todd, thanks for coming out. Thanks for having me. Uh, and, uh, what we're going to start off doing here is, um, maybe give a little bit of your background and let me know, uh, how you ended up at Refine how you ended up doing what you do. Yeah. So my, my background, um, I actually started as an SDR or, uh, for the people that aren't familiar with, that basically a, a salesperson that does cold calling all day. Um, and I. I was, I was terrible at that job. Uh, I was miserable doing it and, but I was fortunate, um, to be in a position where I was the, the number one employee at that company. So like I had a little bit of say like when, when the cold calling, we decided it wasn't going well, I had a little bit of say into here's how I think we should shift our strategy and what I did. And this was back in 2011. Not a lot of, of companies were doing YouTube. Um, what I did was okay, instead of cold calling and doing outreach all day, let's create a YouTube channel to, uh, educate our audience with the intention that once we educate them, they'll come to our website. Um, so we did that and we, we quickly realized that the content that we were putting out and the education that we were putting out on YouTube, Um, was actually much more interesting and valuable to our target market than what the original plan for the website was. So we, we actually switched up the, the business model a little bit to be more of a like influencer model as essentially what we became. And then we built other things off of that. Um, but that's kind of my intro into content. And then. Because of that, I was lucky enough to be on like the leading edge of all these platforms as they had their really high, organic growth. So like Facebook back in like 2012. Um, and we went to YouTube, uh, I'm sorry, uh, Instagram, like a year or two later. And then TikTok been doing that since 2019. So like I've, I've been lucky enough to see. How all these platforms have evolved and how they work, um, since their high, organic growth days. So, um, that's how, that's my content background. And then I did that for, for several years and then decided that I wanted to get into B2B. Um, so I, I started with a company, um, doing a little bit more like traditional marketing, uh, which I wasn't a huge fan of. And I was getting ready to go back into. The, the industry where I came from. And then I saw the, the opportunity at Refine Labs. Um, and now I get to do, you know, all this content stuff is my day to day. So hopefully that too. Long-winded No, no, I think that's, that's great. And that's a good rundown of how you, you, you kind of get there and you mentioned something interesting. You were talking about hitting all those. Platforms as they were ramping up. Um, do you feel like, uh, now, right, T's not brand new anymore, but is there still enough space there for growth for a lot of, um, people who wanna get started today? Yeah, absolutely. And I, I would say there's still room for growth on, I mean, I won't say every channel, but. You know, most of the channels that people have given up on as like it being saturated. Like I think a lot of people say that about YouTube, but like, I, I could, I could tell you there's there's brand new YouTubers every day that are driving huge amounts of success. You just have to know how to do it. Right. The same thing is with the same thing with TikTok. Um, one of the, the beautiful things about TikTok as a platform is. Where a lot of these other channels, they serve your content up based on the following that you have TikTok serves up content based on interests. So if, if I put out a piece of content and I have, you know, 15 followers, but it's a really good piece of content and a ton of people are interested in that, in that topic. Like it can still get millions of views. I, I had that happen with one of the accounts I manage. um, late last year, like it was a brand new account. There was six or seven, like actual posts on the account and like the, the seventh or eighth video that I put out, it went off for in the beginning. Like when I first, when I first put it out, I put it out on Saturday morning and every, any, every video before it. 200, 300 views. And then I checked this one, like two hours after I put it out. And it was at like 150,000 views. Now I was filming with a buddy at the time. I'm like, like, holy man. Look, this video is like popping off and I kept checking it throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was at a million views. Two weeks later, it was at 10 million views. And the beauty of that is every video that, that came before it went from a couple hundred views to a couple thousand views. I gained maybe 10,000 followers off that single post. And every video that I posted after that, like they would get average like 15 to 25,000 views. And then like every six, seven a videos you'd have one golf for a quarter million. So like the, the. The platform serves content based on interest, not based on your following. And that makes it, that makes it easier to build a following because it attracts the people that are, are interested in your content. That's, uh, that's very well said. And, um, that's, that's kind of what I've heard is that. Kind of dividing line there, right? Like they're, they're serving content. Um, it doesn't matter how many followers you have. Uh, and it's not as susceptible maybe to that, that, that like, I dunno, bubble that a lot of people end up and where you hear from the same people all the time. Um, which I will admit that, that your videos come up on my LinkedIn feed every day, because I think, you know, I interact with it. LinkedIn's like, Neil likes this stuff. Give, give me, you know, more Todd videos. Right. So, yeah, for sure. And I'll say this too, like the. A lot of people be because of what I just said, a lot of people get frustrated when they don't hit, you know, they, they put out 10 videos and they're not at 10,000 followers yet. Um, and, and I'll, I'll tell you, like on my, on my own individual count, like I don't have massive amounts of followers on my, on my individual count. And you. Part of that is because when I first started doing TikTok personally, like I wasn't super comfortable on camera. Like I had to build that muscle. So in the beginning I basically started out kind of regurgitating my, my LinkedIn text posts. And then eventually, like once I got comfortable enough, once I started getting feedback that people liked the content, even though the delivery was trash, they liked the content. It made me, you know, comfortable enough to start experimenting with entertainment, to start being, you know, just better on camera. So like, if you don't hit that immediate, you know, virality in the beginning that, that people kind of like expect for some reason with TikTok, um, you know, people will tell you, like, if you don't get, if you don't get a viral video and like 15 videos to like start a new account, like. You do that and you're gonna, you're just never gonna be successful. Like it it's like any other platform in the sense that you have to put out content, get feedback from your audience. What, what is working and also get feedback from the algorithm. That's part of the beauty of TikTok compared to like a YouTube. like I can get instant feedback the next day, whereas YouTube, like, cuz I'm putting out daily content and I'm getting those analytics daily. Whereas YouTube, like I put out a video Monday takes 48 hours for any, any metrics to even populate mm-hmm I don't get as much. I don't get as much engagement. So it's more difficult to tell. um, and you know, if I want to, because of the, the nature of the long form video, if I wanna test something new, it takes me a week to two weeks to, to try something new and, and get the feedback on that. So the beauty of TikTok is I can, I can, I can test things in real time, every single day to see what works and, and make my videos that much better. That much faster. So, so That, that, uh, that kinda makes me brings up. We'll see if I remember 'em both before I, uh but kind of brings up two thoughts. Um, so. Is that what drives, because I've wa I've looked at your channel and preparation for this talk, and I've seen a lot of your content come online, uh, and repost a lot of it through LinkedIn. And you've got a few different kind of threads, right? A few different looks, uh, almost series of videos. Does is that why you're, you're taking that approach of having several different series? Do you eventually kill one off if it's not performing or ramp up on another, if it's really getting it done? Yeah. So the reason that I do series and, um, just for the, the people that aren't familiar with, my content, like for instance, I'll do, like, one of my series is called the worst marketer in the world. It's basically like a spoof off of the dos ekis. Most interesting man in the world commercials. Um, I do one called if B2B marketing did, you can like plug in whatever you want there. Like I've done. If B2B marketing did press conferences, uh, documentaries, the five o'clock news, like plug in whatever you want there. Um, I did a, a series where basically I called it, like if movies were about B to B and then basically just cut myself. Into one side of a movie conversation. Right? The, the reason that that I have these series is because when I first got on the platform, um, I, I, I just viewed a lot. Um, I, I tried to like, I identify trends and the way that I, um, Associated people with content. And what I, what I kind of realized was that, and this is honestly, like, I'll say this is one of the weaknesses of TikTok. Um, at least for me, when, when I scroll through TikTok, um, I will be able to tell you like a, a person or a creator that I really love because I know their content. There's only a select few that I could actually tell you that person's name. So like when, when I see a series, I can automatically associate that with like the person that's created. I may not know their name, but after, after I see that long enough and after I associate the, the video with that person long enough, like it, it starts to click. Whereas when I'm going through TikTok and I see. Trends channels that are like all trends or, you know, audio dancing, audio trends, like the, the things that people like, like, um, stare the stereotypical TikTok content. Like those pieces of content. Very rarely make me go to a person's profile to check out more. Like I may like it in my feed. But like, I'm not, I'm not going to investigate more. So like, the reason that I create series is so I wanna be known as the guy that, that, you know, someone might not say, Hey, do you follow Todd Clouder on, on TikTok. But they might say, have you seen the guy who does the worst marketer in the world? Right. You know, spoofs. And then once you start to build that, like that's when people start to remember your name and all that. But like, at least for me, When I scroll the platform, like it takes me a long time to, to actually remember somebody's name, whereas on like a different channel, like a YouTube or a LinkedIn, like I tend, and I don't know why this is maybe it's just the, the quickness of the, the nature of the platform. But when I see, I, I tend to remember people better on other platform. Excellent. And, uh, because you brought up the worst marketer in the world, um, I, uh, you know what, I'm gonna have people go watch those after the fact, but, uh, I will bring up worst marketer in the world is a great series that Todd puts out both on LinkedIn and you can find on a sick duct profile. Um, He's got a Shyla booth spoof video that I, I said was the first one that made me laugh out loud when I saw it on the LinkedIn feed, um, where Todd tries to jump to the moon, which you know, is, uh, it's good stuff. And then, uh, yeah, the origin story was another one I've got queued up if. I'll put 'em in the description of the live stream so people can get to 'em easily. Um, but, uh, yeah, we won't, we won't, we won't make, uh, we won't eat up interview time with them today. Um, let's see, I get work back through my notes here. We got a little organic there, which is good for interviews, but bad for keeping track of what we talked about. My fault. I got, I got off topic so, uh, yeah, I do wanna, I. What we're doing today is the VI wheel creator network, which is my video community that we, uh, we help solo entrepreneurs, uh, reach further and talk to the right people and become more efficient in their businesses by utilizing video. Um, that is, uh, that group. We do monthly themes and this month is TikTok. That's why we've got Todd on here. Um, I have a note in here too. I first became aware of you, Todd, when you spoke on a panel with, uh, Steven Pope, uh, do you remember doing that panel discussion? I do. There was a couple of talkers. Steven's gonna come, uh, present for us next week. So, uh, everybody can keep an eye out for that. Um, Let's see working through here. So we talked about strategy. Do you have any tips? Uh, if somebody's brand new on TikTok, like they are not sure what their strategy should, should be. Maybe they're in a position like you spoke about where they're not like ready to get crazy on camera, but something that could maybe get the ball rolling on. Yes. What I tell people to do, uh, TikTok is dangerous in the sense that it's very easy to just kind of get lost in a scroll, just kind of like a mindless scroll on the platform. So basically what I tell people to do when they're, when they're first starting out is be very mindful and very intentional with how you use the platform. So like when you pull up. basically, I, I tell people like set a timer for like 30 minutes and start scrolling. And as you scroll, I, I tell people to, to skip any trends, skip any, you know, dancing or, or things that aren't really. The stereotypical stuff again. And any time that you come across, like a really good piece of original content and specifically a longer piece of original content that just by the time you finish watching it, like you're not bored and you may even watch it again. Like that's the stuff you wanna look for. um, whether it's in your niche or not, like, I don't care if, if it's the specific topic you're looking for, but once you find a piece of content like that, that, that keeps you fully engaged. I want you to go to that. Person's actual profile. And once you, once you go to the person's profile, like there's a couple things I want you to do before you look at any of their other content. I tell people to do like a, like a macro audit of that person's channel. So. If you have the ability. Oh, well let me step back a little bit. So when, when you're doing this macro audit, basically, I want you to look at a couple things like scroll through their entire library. Are they doing series like, like we just talked about like, this is how that unlock came to me. Are they doing series? Like which series are performing well, are they doing like multiple. Episodes or episodic content where it's not like the, the difference being a series would be something like the worst marketer in the world where like, you don't have to watch part one to find part two interesting. Whereas like episodic content, like, you know, if you, you know, fo it's like the, to be continued thing. Right, right. So. Are they doing those sorts of things? Once you, once you kind of do this, this audit, and generally you can figure that stuff out based on like thumbnails. Like you won't have to actually watch any of the content at that point. Once you figure some of those things out, you can, you can actually go into the content. And I like to start, like, at the very beginning, depending on how much content they have, that may not be realistic, but like, I like to go back. At least a a month or two and work my way back up. And basically what you're looking for as you watch the content is the things that keep you engaged through their content. And again, this isn't, this isn't, um, don't think of this as like, even from a content level or like a niche level. Think of this as about. What are they doing? That gets you from point a to point B. So it could be, I've seen a lot of people, like use transitions. I've seen people do that are really effective using like voiceover. I've seen people that, you know, are they just, they, they take a lot of different scenes, like there's, there's small little things. Did I cut it out? Yeah. For a moment. We got you back. okay. So there's, there's these there's these. There's these little things that you'll find when you do this, like 10, 15, 20 times amongst different channels that you see, like all of these different creators are, are doing, but they're applying it to their own niche. Like it's, and I don't want, I don't want people to confuse that with like stealing ideas. And they're just like, like, if you think about trends, people will steal the, the piece of audio. and then like put type over the audio that relates to their niche. Like, that's not what I'm talking about. There's, there's different little tactics that keep you engaged in the video. And when you start watching all these different creators that make original content, you'll figure out like those different things that, that keep you engaged. Um, and then those are the things that you can take into your, your own, you know, videos that, that aren't just you stealing other people's ideas and. You know, regurgitating them into your niche. Right. Some of the more technical, uh, pieces, which that's a great way to do it. You know, I don't think anybody really has the self-awareness like, I really like that video and it's because, but if you line up a dozen of them and you watch 'em and you look for similarities, then you're able to, uh, to kind of pick that out and be like, well, It looks like, you know, I don't know, transitions within, uh, every 20 seconds or, you know, starting a video this way or doing whatever. Um, yeah. And like, you'll, you'll hear it. It's, it's not apparent at all when you watch most of the time when you watch a single video. So like you'll like something and you'll go watch it and you'll be like, well, they're just, they're just entertaining or they're just good. But then when you, when you start to, like you said, You know, do this amongst 10, 15, 20, 30 channels, you start to realize like instinctively what people are doing. And it, it's not that they're just like super entertaining or really good. They have, I mean, the content has to be good, but they have different methods of getting you through that content. And like, there's, there's a lot of things that like, that have become very apparent that people use to a point where like, I wouldn't even call them that effective anymore because like everybody is onto it, but like, I'll use the example of like, it used to be like a very big thing. It's it still may be like, I, I sometimes do it, like if it, if it just falls into place, but like, it used to be very, um, people would be very intentional about like looping their videos. So like the beginning of the video, Like seamless seamlessly looped back in with like the video and the audio back into the beginning of the video. So like the viewer didn't know when the video ended, which is like, you realize when you start hearing the same thing again, that it's over. But like people, people were, I mean, that was like one of the things that people found early on was effective. Like, is that still effective? I don't personally think so, you know, maybe for some it is, but you know, those are the types of things that you can find when you, when you start, you know, looking at multiple channels. And so from a technical aspect, let's just say somebody's using that, uh, technique and it loops and you get, I dunno, say five seconds into the second run of the video before you're like, wait, I already saw this and you move on. Does that second, um, kind loop through count as a view and affect the interaction or, or any of those other bonuses that TikTok. Is using to determine whether it's yeah, so, I mean, you want, you want, you want people to get through the entire video? Um, there's, there's two metrics that, that I always focus on. One is, and this, this comes from, this comes from back in my, back in my YouTube days. Um, to me, the most effective metric that I can look at is. Total watch time. So like, even though, even though TikTok, doesn't give you like a retention graph, like, like YouTube does. So, like I can't see like certain spots where people are falling off. What I can do is I can see like total viewers, total minutes, minutes watched and like average watch time and I can figure out like where most people make it to. Um, so like for me, that's a, that's a, an important metric. Um, but yeah, the, the, the goal in this is any content platform, like your, your goal is to get them to stay on platform as long as you can on your specific content. So if you can do that, the ultimate goal is to what I just said, like get them to watch your video and then go into your, your profile and watch the rest of them, but right. Go deeper and, uh, kind of go from there. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Um, All right. Let me, let me check in here and see we've, we've talked a lot about strategy. We've talked about some of the benefits of TikTok, I think with, uh, you know, quick hit content and, you know, people are able to, to, to reach out in a different way because the algorithms so much different. Do you think there are any other, like, really obvious benefits to the platform over other video platform? I think the beauty of TikTok right now is that every other platform out there sees how, how well this is working and they're all trying to copy. So where, and I, I tell this a lot to like individual contributors on teams, you know, the, the, the kind of tried and true method for content distribution is take one long form piece of. Audio or video and then chop it up. So you can, you can release it on, on multiple platforms. Like that's what I did with YouTube. I would start with a YouTube, uh, video. I would chop it up for originally. It was Facebook and it was Instagram. Then it was TikTok. And we started doing like behind the scenes stuff for TikTok. That's kind of the tried and true method, but that's a very heavy lift, right. If one, like it's not part of my normal day job, or even if it is part of my normal day job, like, and I'm not, I, I don't know how to, you know, I may be the subject matter expert, but I don't know how to edit or, or, you know, do any of that stuff. Or I may be an editor or a videographer, but I'm not the subject matter expert. So like, right. It, it becomes a, a task that requires multiple people, whereas TikTok. I can go on. I can go on TikTok every single day and create multiple pieces of content if I want. And like I said before, get real time feedback from my audience. Whereas before, you know, I'm, I'm creating long form content that I have to break up. Right? So like, it, it takes me that much longer to do it. And now I can, I can repurpose all of that content to every other platform because vertical video. Just about every other platform has a vertical video Fe a short form, vertical video feature. Right. And even the ones that don't like LinkedIn, like vertical video still performs extremely well, because like when you're scrolling through LinkedIn, it's like text, post, text, post, pull photo, you get a vertical video, all those other things, which generally are. You get what I call text, post fatigue. It's like, you read the first couple, then you start skimming. Then you just like it. If you see the person that wrote it, it's someone that you like and then you just kind of start like doing this endless scroll and then you see a vertical video and you stop because either one, you think it's a TikTok and tos are entertaining, so I'm gonna stop and watch it right. Or two, like it's vertical. So like, there's like a, there's an authenticity that comes with vertical video. It doesn't even come with other forms of video, like vertical or, um, like horizontal or square. Yep. So like vertical video just performs well on these other platforms and TikTok gives you the ability. Like, I don't need to be an editor. Like if I'm, if I'm just like some random person that knows nothing about editing, I can get on TikTok. I can do all my edits in the app and I can, I can distribute everywhere cuz they make it extremely easy to download your videos. whereas other platforms like, like Instagram or, or platforms like that, like they make, I have to go out and get a different app just to download my Instagram so I can put it somewhere else or take a screenshot or whatever. Right. So TikTok makes it extremely easy to distribute the, the content that you make there. So that is probably, that probably answers the question why you'll see a lot of TikTok videos end up on say LinkedIn, which is the primary primary platform that I find myself on. Uh, because it's, it's essentially a one way street. We know what it's like putting video on or creating video on LinkedIn as a live stream or whatever. Um, it's hard to get off. So. that that all makes sense, right? You it's a one way street. It's gonna have TikTok branding us. Cause like even all these channels that are trying to copy TikTok, like none of them have good in app editing. So like, even if you go, like I'm gonna say reals is probably the closest mm-hmm in, in terms of like usage to, to TikTok when it comes to. Like that style of content. Like if you've ever tried to edit something in reals, like the audio selection is terrible. Like the, the actual editing functionality itself is garbage. Like when you go to, when you go to, it becomes very easy for someone who knows nothing about editing to do it. So like, if I'm on LinkedIn and I see all these people making successful video content, I don't have to hire an editor anymore. I can go on TikTok and I can do it myself. Right. So it, it, it, it makes what used to be a very heavy lift and extremely light lift for just about everybody. Nice. And that's two, two birds, one stone kind of thing, right? Because that is becoming an increasingly, uh, common thing to see is the TikTok videos poured over to LinkedIn there. So, and, and that's, that's what I tell people. Um, You know, my, my kind of soapbox for the past several months on LinkedIn, not so much lately, but you know, basically December through like April of this year was basically like telling people, like you need to get on TikTok, like you're missing the boat and, um, The the way that I, because everybody would say, well, no, my audience is not TikTok. TikTok is a bunch of kids. And, and like all, even if that was true, which it's not like, like TikTok audience, like you can look at the numbers. It's not the case, but even if that was true, what I was trying to demonstrate through my videos on TikTok, Even if you don't wanna build an audience on TikTok, which some people, some people that they don't like I'm okay with that. You can use that platform to make the platform that you're currently using work a hundred times better for you. Because when you have a text post, I can read it. Whatever you get the text fatigue, like I was talking about when you have a video post. and then you put that same text post on top of it. Now I'm hitting everybody who like, if people don't wanna watch my video, they're in their office, whatever. They don't want sound. I didn't put captions, whatever. They don't have to watch my video, but I still put the, I still put like the educational piece of content on top of it. So if the people who wanna read it, like it was a text post, like they still have that. Mm-hmm . But the people like me who just. I, I just get so burned out on, on reading text posts on LinkedIn. Like I would rather watch the video. So now you're, you're, you're hitting a much bigger audience and the, the beauty of this, and I know I'm getting off on a tangent here, but like the beauty of this is before people would always say like, oh, I don't wanna do video on LinkedIn because video performed so bad on LinkedIn because LinkedIn would use much like Facebook did back in the day, they would use. Three seconds of watch time as a view, whereas with a text post, all you needed was the impression, right? So if I scroll right past it, right, you still get that as a, as a view. And but now with. And I don't know if they've rolled it out to everybody. It took me like three weeks. I get, yeah, I think it's, I think it's mostly out there at this point, uh, to, yeah. So like as a, as a creator, you can see your video analytics on, on your videos now and you see impressions versus views. Yeah. And like, that's powerful because my impressions on videos are way higher than my impressions on text posts. But the funny thing is that they didn't do, they didn't reverse. So like you would think, okay. A, a view for a video is three seconds. An impression is me scrolling by you still don't get a view for a text post, like right. Logically you would think, okay. A view equals they hit C more and that's a view. But they, if you look at your analytics on a text post, you still don't get that. It's only impressions. Yes. So, and that would, you would think that'd be easy enough to pull off, right? If, if , if it was gonna be beneficial. Um, but yeah, that is, that was a huge move that happened recently by LinkedIn. Um, because there was so much. Confusion over that. And, um, like, you know, it's a low bar to be considered a view, right? Like a couple of seconds and 51% or more of the player on screen, I believe. Um, Is is not a huge bar, but once you see it side by side with impressions, you realize how people are just flying down their news feeds, looking for yeah. Whatever, right. Whatever. And when you, and when you look at it compared to a video compared to it like a, I try to compare like apples to apples. So like I'll, I'll pick like a well performing video versus like for me a well performing text, post mm-hmm . For me, at least the video, the video impressions are significantly higher. Yeah. I mean, that may not be the case for everybody. If you're known for text post, it may be different, but yeah. You know, I could see that happening. I I've also, anecdotally I haven't put this through the whole, the ringer, um, in terms of analytics, but, uh, I always find that. Uh, interactions, right? Likes and comments. And so on, tend to be higher if you were apples to apples on impressions between a video and a text post. But again, that's just me. So yeah. Who knows the other, the other thing too, one of the, one of the, the metrics that I like to use to determine if like an individual piece of content is performing well, is. Honestly, I don't really, I mean, to a certain extent, I care about views. Like if it bombs like that sucks, but like the, the, the main metric that I look at is how many, how many people are tagging their coworkers in that, in that message or in that the, the comment section, how many people re-shared. How many, like good conversations are being started in the comments. Right? Not just like thumbs up or like, this was cool. Yeah. You know, how many, like how many, like legitimate conversations are, are happening? Like, those are the things that tell you, like, your audience is engaged. They like it, you know, and, and to me, like tagging someone else or sharing it with a coworker, like that's the ultimate. Yeah. Yeah. And that is such. Uh, uh, that's a step beyond even the comment, right? Because you're putting your own kind of reputation out there, right. To share somebody else's content and that's, that's really powerful stuff. So, um, well, and that, that's also how I'm, this sounds incredibly like obvious, but, um, like, like when people tag. they're coworkers. That's how the, the, the content performed so well. Like my best ever performing post on, on LinkedIn was a, a TikTok that I repurposed there. Mm-hmm and it, the, the reason that it performed so well, or one of the reasons it performed so well was cuz it had like, like close to 500 shares. Yeah. Just 500 people like telling. All their network. And then you look in the comments and there's, I don't know. There was like, like 800 comments or something and like a quarter of them, or just like people tagging, like. Three to five of their, their coworkers. Like that's how, that's how, you know, your, your content gets more eyeballs on it. Oh yeah. Yeah. And that breaks out of that whole first circle, uh, you know, kind of, um, Consumption that happens so much on LinkedIn, right? The first level connections get so much more of your content and breaking out anyway, and that's a great way to do it is so important. What, uh, do you remember what video that was? Uh, yeah, that one was called if sales and marketing were a married couple. okay. I'll find that and put that in, uh, the description after the fact here too. Now I do wanna be respectful of your time. We already rolled through quite a bit of our, uh, our allotted time. So I'm gonna move right onto, we've got one question that I can use as a. Uh, a way to tie together. Every episode of this podcast, it's called the smarter business podcast. What is one thing that you've done for your business or a client's business that has made them smarter or made their business smarter and it can be kept up? Um, I mean, yeah, TikTok will be the obvious one. I'm gonna, I'm going to. because I know there was, there was also the, the book question on here that, that we talked about earlier. So, and this, this actually played like a, a huge, um, a huge role in like my, my YouTube success. So when there's a book out there called primal branding by Patrick Hanlon, and it, it basically teaches you through, like, I think it's a seven. Or not even seven step process, there's just like seven things. Mm-hmm um, that teach you how to turn casual viewers into like die hard fans of your, of your brand. And, um, I think when I started doing YouTube, it took me like five years to get to 50,000 subscribers. Like it, it was a slow burn in the beginning. Um, and then I read that book and like, it just kind of clicked. Like there's a lot of these things that we could be doing that we're leaving on the table and, you know, AF I, I read it, I had my subject matter expert read it. So we were both on the same page. And then like, we both just started coming up with these ideas. And after that, We grew, we doubled every single year until I left, which, um, I left when we were right around like 700,000 subscribers. So like, I would say anybody who's trying to build a community or build like die hard fans for your brand. Like it's, it's definitely worth the read. Very cool. Primal branding. Awesome. I'll I'll find that and put it in the notes too. And, uh, with that Todd, anywhere that you'd like people to find you, where can they find your stuff? Where can they find you? Yeah. Um, Todd, Clouder on TikTok. Todd. Clouder on LinkedIn. Those are my two main channels. So yeah, feel free to shoot me a DM ask questions. If you wanna do a collaboration, always up for that too. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us today. Conversation was excellent. Lot of great info on TikTok here, and for anyone who found this episode useful or the in, uh, information interesting, please, you know, like share, do all the interaction things wherever you happen to be taking in this, uh, episode. And with that, I'll say, uh, happy creating to all and. Goodbye.