Merged Marketing Podcast

178 – How To Build Your Brand on TikTok with Megan Thompson

In today’s episode, we talk with Megan Thompson. She is the social media guru at our company Merged Media. She is the TikTok guru. She has attracted an impressive following of over 103,000 followers on TikTok. She consistently puts out amazing content on TikTok.
Her maiden TikTok video was a dance video, which she quickly realized that it wasn’t to her appeal. She moved on to making random, funny, relatable content that quickly gave her traction. Thanks to some of her viral videos, she has attracted companies such as fashion and skincare brands seeking her to promote their products.

Meghan observes that a company can use your TikTok account to niche by posting content on your ideal target audience. On the other hand, she reckons that the best marketing strategy for an individual seeking to sell themselves as content creators is to seek out a wider variety of audiences through their content. (As many audiences as you can get in front of, do it).
Initially, she rolled out freestyle by posting whatever she wanted. Lately, she has decided to niche down on wedding TikTok. She observes that a trend inspires her creative idea. With the help of her iPhone reminder app, she compiles a list of trendy ideas that become the content source for her TikTok account.
Meghan argues for the need to look presentable in your TikTok videos for more excellent audience traction. As such, she always relies on makeup and filters to boost her image, which usually earns her many views.
Our guest says she pays attention to the analytics to determine why past posted content succeeded or failed. This helps her to avoid repeating the same mistakes that cost a certain post in her future post.
In her experience, TikTok places little weight on hashtags than captions or specific spoken words in videos. The algorithm of TikTok search engine optimization highlights keywords in a trend. Leveraging the keyword in your captions or hashtags often works positively to help increase the viewership of the post.
Meghan advises that we should explore what is working for competitors regarding trends. This serves to gain valuable insight into what worked for them in the past and thus determine potentially successful TikTok content in the future. Also, she underscores the importance of a captivating hook in every of your TikTok video postings.
For one client with a hot tub cleansing solution, they had to get creative due to a need for more user-generated content. They used clips from movies and TV shows relevant to hot tubs, adding graphics and making it fun and engaging for the audience. It gained traction even among audiences without interest in hot tubs because the content was interesting. (There are a lot of different things that people are interested in of which personally you wouldn’t have thought of).
Meghan argues that, by thinking outside the box, there are always plenty of content sources for TikTok videos. These include movie and TV show clips, virus-free clickable Google links, copyright-free YouTube videos, and trending sounds and seasons.
She fears Canada will follow suit in banning TikTok if the US goes through with it. This would spell trouble for content creators like herself, costing her almost 50% of her work. However, the agency as always pivots to where the traffic is, and Instagram would serve as an ideal alternative.
With the impending TikTok shutdown, there is a need to invite her followers to her Instagram account. However, hacking threats scare her a great deal following a current hacking incident on her Instagram account.