TikTok for Wedding Pros: Opportunities and Visibility

[00:00:02] Thank you for tuning in to Wed Pro Business Solutions. I'm your host, Kristina Stubblefield. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about TikTok. Now, before you turn off the episode, thinking to yourself, there's no way I'm going to listen to her talk about a platform where people are dancing and lip syncing, I encourage you to just listen to part of this episode. I think it will open up your mind to why you need to hear about TikTok.

[00:00:38] Consider being on the platform. If you're already on the platform to consider, to start to use it and put out your own videos. Now, let me start by saying I did not start off being a fan of TikTok, being in the digital marketing space and living through many digital ages. I just felt like, oh, here it is something else. And a lot of times people turn to me where they spend their time, where they spend their money.

[00:01:08] And I don't take that lightly. And I'm not one that immediately hops on a bandwagon and shares with all my clients, oh, you should do this. And so it really took me a little while and with my own experience and working with my own coaches, to open up my eyes to my own benefits of being on the platform, utilizing the platform and reaping the benefits. So let's dive right in. You know me.

[00:01:39] I'm a numbers person. And if you don't know me, I'm all about talking about data. If I want someone to invest their time, energy, effort or money into something, I always want it backed with statistics, numbers reporting. So here's what I want to share with you. And these statistics are from influencer marketing hub Tik Tok users spend more than 850 minutes per month on the app.

[00:02:07] TikTok now has over 1 billion monthly active users. Now, this statistic is from January of 2022. And I have news for you, it's gone up the next one. There's 3 billion installations. That means it's been installed 3 billion times.

[00:02:23] The next 1167,000,000 TikTok videos watched in an Internet minute. What did I just say? Yes. 167,000,000 Tik Tok videos watched in an Internet minute. And lastly, it's the highest social media engagement rates per post.

[00:02:45] And to me, that last statistic really stands out and I want to share why. The reason that we put out content, or one of the reasons you should put out content, is to get engagement. Share your personality, share your knowledge, let people know about your business and yourself, depending on your industry. But I'm talking to a lot of wedding professionals. So when something is the highest social media engagement rates per post, that makes me raise my eyebrows.

[00:03:19] It gets my attention because there are other platforms that the numbers have started to go down. And let's be honest, we don't have all the time in the world to spend marketing our businesses, showing up on social media. I'm not going to go down different rabbit hoes. I'm going to stick right here. So for wedding professionals, the reason I really wanted to go ahead and share this episode out with my audience and future listeners is because the results that people are getting, even wedding professionals, I don't want to say alarming, is excellent.

[00:04:04] It's not surprising. It makes you say, wow, I want that for my own business. So I recently read an article from Adage, and most people, if you're not in the marketing space, you won't know what I'm talking about. But they did an article that was geared around Tik Tok reinventing the Bridal business. And one of the things that this article circled around was the hashtag #WeddingTok Weddingtok.

[00:04:44] And at the time, I believe the article was in June of 2022, the hashtag Wedding Talk has over two 4 billion views. Billion. So let's first say, what is Tik Tok? If you're not familiar with what TikTok is, let me just start there. So TikTok is a social media app that is completely centered around short form video.

[00:05:15] Short form video being videos that are very short. There's five second tick tocks, there's 62nd tick tocks. A lot of them you will see are ten to 15 seconds, up to 30 seconds. But that is what Tik Tok is. And I guess there's people out there that say it's kind of a bite sized version of YouTube.

[00:05:39] YouTube also has something called YouTube shorts. But Tik Tok calls itself the leading destination for short form mobile videos with a mission to inspire creativity and bring joy. So for some of you out there, you're thinking, I've only seen people dancing, or groups of people dancing, or duets, people side by side. However, if you really start to look up people, especially in the wedding industry, you will see that some of them are using it to share tips, inspiration. They are also sharing some of their knowledge, best practices.  

[00:06:28] Some of them are doing behind the scenes to give people a glimpse of what's really involved in putting on events. I know that that's kind of popular with wedding planners kind of pulling back that curtain and showing what all's involved. It's not just the day of the wedding. Sometimes it's 1218 months or more leading up to it.

[00:06:59] I think just keeping in your mind that it can showcase your personality, it can increase brand awareness, it can generate leads, also traffic to possibly your other social media platform, maybe Instagram or to your website. In the article that I mentioned earlier from Ad Age, they interviewed some wedding professionals that have talked about how they've embraced the platform. But they also talked to some major brands that are in the wedding business. And when brands get on board, big brands get on board with a platform, it really kind of makes you take more notice that they're investing probably a very good amount of money and time into short form video. And a couple of years ago I talked about to clients when I taught classes, video is not going anywhere.

[00:08:06] A lot of times a couple of years ago, people would come to me and they're like, I don't want to do video. And I'm like, well you better find a way to work through that. You better address it head on because it's not going anywhere. Myself included, raising my hand. Right now as we speak, people think that I just love being on video.

[00:08:27] Surprise. I don't. But when you see a trend, when you see a pattern, that it's not going to change. If we rewind back a couple of years, we were doing highly produced videos, lighting, microphones, backdrops, green screens. I could sit here and list the perfect set.

[00:08:53] Everything. There was a lot of expense put into the set up before the record button was even pushed. And now I'm talking about 510, 15 2nd videos that recorded with your cell phone. Cell phones are amazing. Smartphones are incredible.

[00:09:15] I chuckle when I see on television some of the commercials. I don't get to watch it that often, but some of the commercials will say something about this entire commercial was shot with an iPhone or with a Samsung, this phone. And I think to myself, wow, technology has really come a long way. Technology is incredible when it works. So my point in sharing with you about this whole video thing now, not only do you have to be on camera, you've got to be able to shorten down your pieces of content that you put out.

[00:09:56] So I just said you need to be on camera. A year or so ago, I would have conversations with people that say I'm not comfortable being on camera. And I would share with them with the first thing is turn the camera on and face it the other direction and talk behind it to kind of break the ice and get more comfortable with it. Now it's just a different people want to connect with people and to me that is what has allowed Tik tok and instagram Reels to soar because it's authentic, those authentic, less produced videos are going viral. Now when I talk to clients or I have conversations with people, I was on a panel talking about TikTok a couple months ago for local Chamber of Commerce.

[00:10:57] Just embracing, first of all, signing up and having an account on TikTok. There's step one. Step two, going out and looking at what some of your vendor friends are doing. Are they on the platform going and searching for other vendors? The best thing about the platform is you don't even have to look local.

[00:11:18] You can go up and go out and pull up. DJs, photographers, videographers venues, the list goes on and on. How are they using it? I'm not saying that to go out and just duplicate what they're doing, absolutely not. But it can give you inspiration, it can give you ideas for what videos to do for your business.

[00:11:39] The first step is signing up for an account and going and browsing. That's what I'm saying. And then next, definitely make sure your profile is filled out. You don't get a whole lot of characters to have a big long bio and things like that. But I'll give you two tips.

[00:11:56] Make sure you have in there what you specialize in. Get to the point, narrow down your messaging. Secondly, make sure you connect your Instagram account to your Tik Tok. A lot of times you will find people will watch your videos on TikTok and then they will go and follow you on Instagram. I'm not going to get into a whole bunch of stuff.

[00:12:18] I just wanted to keep a conversation light about TikTok. And it should be considered in your marketing strategy, your marketing plan. It's up to you how you're going to utilize every day in your business or how you're going to capture content to be able to put up TikToks. So as I was going through these steps, one of the other things I want to share with you about TikTok I see a lot of wedding vendors using pictures or video clips from events to put up videos on their Tik Tok accounts. And absolutely you should.

[00:12:56] That is the best thing. I say this so often, but wedding professionals have content available at their fingertips. Now you have to take the pictures, you have to take the video clips, or you have to work with the photographer videographer. That's part of the events. But if you give photo and video credit where it's due, most of them are going to appreciate the fact that you're sharing out their content again.

[00:13:22] It's those relationships. We're back to relationship marketing. So with TikTok, you don't have to be a dancing chicken on screen to capture eyeballs honestly. And so many people say, I want a video to go viral. Well, does it really matter to you that across many states or many countries that people have liked your video or watched your video?

[00:13:49] If you're a local service based business, is that really going to help you in your business? So throw that out the window. Don't worry about a viral video. And to be honest with you, I share with people just starting on TikTok. Don't pay attention to the number, don't keep going back.

[00:14:08] I may be guilty of this myself. Oh no, it's been up for five minutes and nobody's seen it yet. And keep refreshing. Don't do it because at the end of the day, any eyeballs watching or listening to that video is better than zero. Now, there are strategies you can put in place.

[00:14:31] You can do targeted ads on Tik Tok. There are many other things, but my whole point in having this conversation engaged couples are using TikTok to do their research and find wedding professionals. I'm hearing it firsthand. I've attended two wedding shows in the past, I believe now three weeks. And what I'm hearing from these engaged couples, they're using Tik tok I've said it in another podcast episode, and that's why I felt like it was important to tackle this topic, share with you why I'm encouraging you to have an account and to use it as part of your marketing strategy, because there's people there looking in your area for your services.

[00:15:26] And I'm afraid those that do not embrace this platform, as we get a few more months, another year down the road, if this platform keeps going in the direction it is, you're not even going to be in the conversation. As a matter of fact, that's been talked about right now. What if these engaged couples only use this platform to do their research for wedding professionals and you don't have an account? You cannot even be considered one of their wedding professionals for their special day because your business is not found, it's not visible to them, and this is one of the platforms they're living in. You can like Facebook better, and you can prefer to use Instagram, and you can be in on using Google.

[00:16:18] And all of those things, trust me, I believe are important. But if I'm hearing straight from the source that TikTok is one of the most used platforms, I feel an obligation to share to my audience, my listeners, my clients, that this is something we have to take seriously. You know, one of the pillars that I focus on is visibility. And these statistics and these numbers do not lie. Depending on when you're hearing this episode, if you're local to me in the Louisville, Kentucky or Southern Indiana area, I am doing some in person classes.

[00:16:55] TikTok is one of those you can always go to my website@christinasteplefield.com to find out more information. If you're not local or you don't prefer to do it in person, there is going to be an online workshop available in regards to tick tock here very soon. So, again, check the website as well. Christinasteplefield.com, if you've not already joined my free Facebook group, I encourage you to do so. There's links in the show notes or if you're seeing this on social media, just check in the comments for a link to that Facebook group at any time.

[00:17:34] You can get access by going to KristinaStubblefield.com, thank you so much for tuning in. And until next time, see ya.