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[00:01:49]
Joe Casabona: More and more we’re hearing why businesses should be on TikTok. As a creator, this can be a new place for you to gain an audience if you do it right. And today’s guest, Alex Rossman, knows a thing or two about TikTok.
His agency Rossman media is currently moving many of his b2b clients to the platform, and with great success. Today Alex will tell you why you should be there and how to make the most of being on the platform, from building community to generating more leads.
In Build Something More we talk about what it’s like being a musician—we both happen to play the drums—what it’s like writing songs, and there’s a heavy dose of The Beatles in there too. It’s one of my favorite Build Something Mores. This was a fantastic conversation for me. Alex helped me reframe my TikTok strategy after talking to Rebecca Simon last year.
By the way, this episode is brought to you by Ahrefs, TextExpander and Nexus. You can learn about them and get all of the show notes over at howibuilt.it/252. But for now, let’s get into the intro and then the interview.
[00:03:03]
Intro: Hey, everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps small business owners create engaging content that drives sales. Each week I talk about how you can build good content faster to increase revenue and establish yourself as an authority. I’m your host Joe Casabona. Now let’s get to it.
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[00:04:06]
Joe Casabona: Alex, how are you doing today?
Alex Rossman: Good, Joe. Thanks so much for having me. I love these kinds of conversations because I know that you’ve been obviously dabbling in the TikTok world. So you’ll have some recent experience that we can kind of go off of as well, which I think will be applicable to all your listeners. So very excited.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, my pleasure. And thanks for coming on the show. The first time I heard about TikTok it was from my kids’ babysitter. She was-
Alex Rossman: Sounds about right.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, right. She was a senior in high school at the time and she was saying a lot of things I don’t understand. Like, “I’m vibing with that” and things. But then she brought up TikTok and I downloaded it and I tried it for like five minutes and then it scared and confused me, and then I stopped using it.
And then there’s been a consistent thread about if you’re a small business sooner you need to be on TikTok. And clearly, this is something that you have kind of built your business on. I’ve seen lots of people have great success with it, so I’m excited to talk to you about this. But first, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Alex Rossman: Absolutely. So I am the owner of Rossman Media. We’ve been in business for about six years. And really our bread and butter is social media. So taking brands and really distributing their content to their audience that’s applicable to each platform, right?
So whether it’s Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, we really have a team built in place that can facilitate that from the content creation, which I know you know a lot about, to the actual paid component as well. So helping really push that brand out there with some paid component behind it.
And then TikTok is really, really seeing just a huge acceleration over the last year, year and a half, especially for our clients. So we’re actually in process of really moving a lot of consumer-based brands as well as b2b kind of service brands over to TikTok. And we get a lot of the same type of questions that I’m sure you’re coming across, which is like, is TikTok the right platform for me? Especially if you’re a b2b company. And so we found very quickly that it certainly is.
Joe Casabona: That’s amazing. So you’ve been in business for six years. So if I do my math right, that’s 2016.
Alex Rossman: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: So I know a lot of people who kind of started Social Media businesses are kind of around Twitter, right? I feel like maybe this is just feeling but Twitter seems like the first really businessy viable social network. Facebook was still kind of like for college kids, more or less. But brands could really make an impact on Twitter. And then, of course, we’ve seen Facebook kind of move in that direction.
When Snapchat came out, Snapchat was used for things that I’m sure Snapchat wasn’t originally meant to be used for. And then a lot of businesses got on that as well.
So we’ve seen this, this evolution. I feel like a new social network launches it takes advantage of some medium, right? Where Facebook, it was like the web and then Twitter I think it was supposed to mostly be texting, right? That’s what it was 140 characters. Instagram was photos, Snapchat, and then now TikTok really has taken it to the next level with like video. I guess the question in all of that is, how do you know when it’s a good time to move to a social network?
Alex Rossman: Yeah, great, great question. So what we’ve seen is it’s about demand. So where are people migrating to get their information. Whether it’s applicable to what they like or just something that’s entertaining, or a brand that they may like and follow.
Our whole philosophy is you want to be where everybody is and where they’re going. You don’t want to be kind of stagnant in a platform that may not be serving you for the long term. Because as we all know, social media, as you just mentioned, changes constantly. There’s new platforms.
I will say, though, TikTok is one of those platforms that actually has accelerated a lot faster. I mean, usually, as you’ve seen with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, they’ve been around for a while. We haven’t seen too many kind of competitors come in and really kind of, you know, start moving away some of their user base over to this new platform which is TikTok.
And so our whole philosophy, as I mentioned, is you want to go where the people are. And you want to be able to establish your brand in a way that’s authentic, that tells your story, because really, that’s what people are gravitating to. I mean, you look at Instagram, you know, it started out with a lot of photographers with super polished photos showcasing their catalogue. Now, it’s kind of reverting back to very raw, user-generated content that can really just be shot from your smartphone.
And that’s really what people are gravitating towards. So it’s very interesting. We’re taking some of these major brands like the Airbnbs of the world and Saks Fifth Avenue and some of our clients and we’re saying, “Hey, we’re actually not going to create super polished productions like you’ve seen on Instagram, Facebook.
Instead, we’re going to really strip that down and we’re going to start doing some very user-generated content.” And so that’s kind of our focus is we want to take brands to where they’re going to get the most exposure.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, that’s a really interesting point you make there. Because you’re right, like TikTok… not TikTok. Instagram was very like… Ironically like Tom from MySpace had a pretty good following on Instagram, because he took these incredible photos.
But with Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok with more people getting more capable phones, and then of course you have a more connection with celebrities, right? People do want that kind of that real feeling authentic “I’m really getting a look into their life” sort of thing.
Alex Rossman: Totally. Totally.
Joe Casabona: It’s like reality TV 2.0 less scripted.
Alex Rossman: That’s a really good way to put it. Absolutely. I feel like the audience has been so… when I say the audience I mean really everybody that consumes social media has been thrown so many super salesy polished ads and things like that.
And they’re starting to be very, you know, conscious and intentional about the brands that they engage with. Because, you know, they want to feel like they’re being a part of a brand that’s authentic, that is sustainable, that’s conscious about what’s going on the rest of the world. And a lot of that is done through just interpersonal relationships that are developed through social media, which is just again, the new wave. It is very raw.
I mean, even some of our b2b clients that are moving over to TikTok, a lot of it is showcasing what their customers are saying about their brand and doing it in a way that’s super authentic. Sometimes we just tell our clients to have their customers just do like a face-to-face video with their iPhone and say, “Hey, we had a great experience with Joe. This is kind of the experience we had.”
And it personalizes the brands we work with and it makes it far more authentic, is that really the best way to put it. So I think that’s what we’re starting to see is users are kind of gravitating towards the TikTok type of content.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah. I like that. I think it’s a really good point and really interesting. I am currently… I probably should have had this ready already. But Brittney Lynn, who connected us—she’s like one of my favorite people. She comes up on the show a lot—she mentioned that you saw some maybe like viral success. Right? So you’re a musician first, right?
Alex Rossman: I am.
Joe Casabona: Well, what instrument do you play? Or instruments.
Alex Rossman: Oh, man, I play guitar, piano, drums, ukulele, banjo, I sing.
Joe Casabona: Nice.
Alex Rossman: I’ve done it really all. And that’s actually how I got started was really in the music world. I was touring and creating music for other large musicians and labels. So that’s really kind of how I got started. And a lot of it was kind of doing my own marketing, my own PR, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with is, you know, just building your own personal brand.
And so took that and realize that, you know… and I still do a ton of songwriting. That’ll never leave. But I’ve created something where I can kind of mesh both of the worlds. A lot of my job at Rossman Media is creative. A lot of it is marketing. A lot of it is PR. And so I feel like I’ve been able to kind of find a good medium.
Joe Casabona: That’s awesome. Actually, maybe we could talk about that in Build Something More. Because I play the drums and I am currently doing Ringo Starr’s masterclass.
Alex Rossman: Right on.
Joe Casabona: And it’s so good. We can talk about it in Build Something More. But the fact that you just listed a bunch of instruments made me think of a quote from it where Ringo in like the first five minutes of the course basically, he just goes, “And Paul could play any instrument.” And I’m like, “He didn’t say Paul McCartney. He just said, everybody knew who he meant when he said Paul.” So I just thought that was funny. But yeah, maybe we could talk about that and the songwriting process, because that-
Alex Rossman: True musicians right there, for sure though. That must be a great masterclass, because Ringo and the rest of the Beatles are just a next level in terms of their musicianship and all the instruments that they experimented with and all their albums. Yeah, super cool.
Joe Casabona: It’s unbelievable. We’ll do this quick sidebar and then we’ll get back to the conversation.
Alex Rossman: Sure.
Joe Casabona: Because as we record this, the documentary on Disney Plus came out and so I’m working my way through that. I can’t watch anything for a long time in this setting because I have small children. But just watching them write music together is such an interesting thing. So I’ll be excited to kind of talk about that. It’s something I don’t know anything… You know, I just kind of play along with my playlists and stuff like that. But it’s really interesting.
And yeah, the masterclass is great. Like Ringo has been playing the drums for over 60 years now. And just like the joy that he gets still from. Maybe it’s over 40? Over 60 sounds like a really long time.
Alex Rossman: Could be.
Joe Casabona: I guess it could be right if he started playing in the 50s. But he just still gets like so much joy talking about it. Just like everybody should find that thing that brings them that much joy even after, we’ll say 50 years just in case I did my math wrong.
Alex Rossman: Totally. And even if you’re not like Ringo Starr, which I don’t think many of us are in the sense where he builds just a totally desirable, amazing career. But I totally agree with you, Joe, that everyone should have something that they can always turn to that’ll just bring so much joy to them. And like it’s not always your day-to-day job. It’s not.
Obviously, that’s ideal if there’s parts of it that are. But if you can have an outlet for something that you just really enjoy that you can just kind of block out everything in the rest of your life and just focus on that. I’m kind of like that with my music. So I have a piano that’s just sitting in our living room, and I’ll just, you know, end of the day just go and cut out for like 30, 45 minutes and just start jamming. So I highly recommend it.
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Joe Casabona: Kind of bringing it back, you saw some viral success because you covered a Chainsmoker song and then they saw it.
Alex Rossman: I did.
Joe Casabona: Is that right?
Alex Rossman: Yeah. So one of their big songs several years back was Roses. I don’t know if you remember that one. And so I basically did an acoustic rendition of it. It was actually me and a couple other bandmates. We basically created this video, I recorded the acoustics, and we had a trumpet do part of the riff and things like that. So it’s kind of cool.
And we shot the video in San Diego on the boardwalk. And so we created this really cool kind of like black and white video and we shared it with their management just say, “Hey, we were inspired by the song. And here’s what I put together.”
And before I knew it, next day literally my phone broke because of all the notifications I didn’t realize I had. Like all the notifications on from Facebook to Instagram. And so it’s just like, ding ding ding ding ding, ding ding and I’m like, “What’s going on?”
So I ended up going into work that day, I was working at like a big payroll company, very corporate job, but all of my friends came up to me and they’re like, “Do you know that your video is on The Chainsmokers’ Facebook page and it’s going viral?” I think it already has like 3 million views like in 24 hours. And I was like, “Oh my God, I actually did not know that it was going viral.”
It was great because it got me introduced to that group. We started to kind of keep in contact and do some songwriting stuff. So, it was a very, very cool experience to see your music kind of really blossom and get out there, even if it is a cover.
Joe Casabona: Super cool. Was it stressful? I feel like I’d be very stressed if I went viral.
Alex Rossman: I feel like so many people are going viral these days now with TikTok and stuff that it’s starting to become like normal. I think it was just cool because when I went out in San Diego for a period of time, probably three weeks, it’s funny how viral videos last for such a short time.
But long story short, I would go out and everyone’s, “Oh, that’s Rossy. He did the acoustic cover.” It’s some pictures and things like with people that were genuinely fans. I thought it was really cool. I was like, “Oh, this is great. I love getting that exposure.”
But it’s also a certain level of like a little bit of stress, because people are coming up to you like, “What are you going to do next? Is there going to be a new cover? What’s your next viral video? And I’m just like, “Oh, we’ll see.”
Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah. That kind of that kind of pressure-
Alex Rossman: You gotta always be on.
Joe Casabona: Will from Parachute, I don’t know if you follow him on TikTok or Instagram-
Alex Rossman: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: But he was doing those funny, like, origin story TikToks for a while, and I’m like, “Gosh, it must be really stressful.” Because I think I found him through the Law and Order one. I think that was the one that started it all. God, just hilarious. And then I loved every one who put on after that. But there are so many songs, but there’s only like so many… I don’t know. I feel like when you go viral, if you put your pressure on yourself to keep doing that you’re going to end up kind of really, really stressed about it and wondering-
Alex Rossman: Yeah. You gotta have fun with it, too. You know, you got to realize it’s entertainment. You’re right, though. When you do have a certain level of viewership and subscribers, you kind of do have to be very consistent. You’ve got to always be putting out content, always be kind of identifying what’s trending, what are new things that you can do to keep moving the needle. But, yeah, it can be a lot when you start building that following for sure.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Thinking about YouTube, because I’ve been doing a lot more of that and being more intentional about it lately, I spoke to a YouTube consultant, who was basically going through my channel, and he was like, “If any of these videos went viral tomorrow or made it to the featured page of YouTube tomorrow, would you be okay only making videos like this?” And I was like, “Oh, I don’t know.” He’s like, “Yeah, I look at them, and if the answer is no, you have to unlist them.” because that’s a-
Alex Rossman: Very, very valid. Very valid.
Joe Casabona: So it’s tough. I look at like MrBeast, he has basically like a factory for thumbnails. And he puts so much time and effort into them. Just wild.
Alex Rossman: I know. It is wild. And it’s exactly like you said, or I guess your consultant said is, you know, people latch on to what they think you are or at least what they think you are through the videos you create. So that brand element is definitely there even for personal public figures.
So it is kind of tricky because sometimes the videos that go viral you don’t think those are the ones that are either your best work, or that may not be representative of who you are in its entirety. But once it’s out there and it does go viral, it’s almost like the audience tells your story. The audience kind of expects more content similar to that.
And you see a lot of that on TikTok, right? They find their niche. So, like, “I’m going to be the beer and wine advocate, and I’m going to only do reviews of beer and wine,” or “I’m going to… It’s like there’s always kind of find your niche. But I think that’s a really, really good point.
Joe Casabona: So that’s really interesting. As we talk about kind of getting your business on TikTok, because I think a lot of people probably still view TikTok as like this thing that teenagers and celebrities use to make dumb videos or whatever, right? Like, LIONFIELD music they’re these Italian musicians and I love their videos because it’s usually like shaming food TikTok, which is something that I secretly would love to do, because I’m like, “This is like a crime.” But looking at that, I wouldn’t be like, “Yes, it’s very obvious how I can help my business as a podcast consultant on TikTok.
Alex Rossman: For sure. For sure. It’s so interesting, because I think a lot of people have that. I mean, somewhat of a misconception because it did, I mean, truthfully start out as very Gen Z focused. Just teenagers dancing in front of a camera, like that’s all the TikTok really was.
Now it’s starting to get far more versed in terms of the type of content, the type of creators. You’re starting to see a much broader age demographic as well certainly still skews younger. But you’re starting to see some of these more, like you mentioned, some parody channels. Especially some public figures that have gotten big on YouTube now we’re expanding over to TikTok and creating kind of more bite-sized content or repurposing, which I know we talked before we actually jumped on and started recording was repurposing content and kind of having that omnichannel approach.
So if you’re doing a podcast, it goes live on YouTube, and then it goes on Instagram. And you have all these kinds of different specked-out pieces of content. And TikTok can be a great place for that. I’m just a huge proponent of try to diversify the outlets that you put your content.
Because the reality is there is going to be a different audience on each of them. YouTube, very similar to TikTok, it’s a video platform. But YouTube is more long form content, as you know, right? People are willing to sit in front of their computer screens and watch a 10, 20, 30 minute, even an hour video. TikTok is 10 to 15 seconds. So there might be ways to take some audio bits of a longer piece and turn it into a TikTok piece of content.
Joe Casabona: So that’s actually a really great point, is repurposing. I tell my clients and my members to do that where they can. You write a blog post, maybe record it as a podcast episode or whatever. So I’ve been doing TikTok for a little bit. I’ll have a link to my TikTok as well as everything we talked about in the show notes over in howibuilt.it/252. But I’ve been putting my TikTok on my video on TikTok, on Instagram reels, and on YouTube shorts.
I’ve been doing YouTube shorts a little less lately because they do way better than my actual videos. But I don’t want them messing up my analytics because they don’t really count for much on YouTube yet. How important is it, when you’re thinking about repurposing, to think about the platform, I guess? Can I just put a put an audiogram of this podcast on TikTok and expect it to get like thousands of views?
Alex Rossman: Great, great question. Actually, I think more so than ever before, it is important to consider the platform when creating content. I do. I think there’s obviously ways to repurpose. Like your example, if you took some compelling audio bits of this podcast and edited into like a 15-second piece, especially if it’s motivational or has some component there, absolutely, it can do well on TikTok.
I think also one thing that’s really big with TikTok, which I will say a lot of creators consider before they actually produce the content is what’s trending. Is there a specific song that I could use and put my own spin on it? Is there a specific hashtag challenge I could leverage? The reason that they’re doing that is because the likelihood that that piece of content after they post it goes viral is much, much higher. Because TikTok is kind of a very community-driven platform where they want you to use their proprietary widgets, they want you to use their proprietary sounds and things like that.
So I think it’s really important, especially creating content on TikTok just kind of see what other people are doing, and put your own spin on it. Obviously, if you can be a trendsetter and you can create that own trend, that more power to you. But to get started, I do think it’s good to kind of piggyback off of what’s trending and kind of putting your own spin on it.
Joe Casabona: And that’s really interesting. Because something I noticed on TikTok is that if you watch – are they called TikTok’s videos? What’s the terminology?
Alex Rossman: TikTok video or TikTok post. I mean, it’s not a super, I would say, familiar term yet for it.
Joe Casabona: Gotcha, gotcha. All right. So you see a video on TikTok, and if you’re watching it, you can like press like “use this music” or “use this effect.” When you’re looking for music for your videos, you can see what’s trending. And then this kind of creates like a directory of everything that’s using that audio. Right?
Alex Rossman: 100%.
Joe Casabona: I think the one that stood out most to me for a while was the… it was like a group of kids dancing to that really slowed down like French techno song where they were like dancing, swinging their arms back and forth. And a bunch of people just made that the background and then it was like a success story that they were dancing to. That was my favorite one. But I could have scrolled through those for hours because it was just so funny to me.
Alex Rossman: Oh, 100%. We call it kind of the black hole of TikTok. You just start scrolling through all these videos and you can be there for too long. But that’s exactly right. And especially like you said, if you kind of gravitate towards a specific song, they usually shows you all the videos that are populating with that specific audio.
So it’s definitely very different in terms of the type of social platform it is compared to anything else that we’ve seen so far because of those reasons.
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Joe Casabona: When I think about TikTok versus when I’m more familiar with, like Twitter, like they say on Twitter like 80% of your tweets should be helpful and 20 should be salesy or whatever, right? Like are self-promotional, maybe not salesy.
On Facebook, you have like the Facebook groups and you can promote your stuff their Facebook pages or whatever. And like the same thing with Instagram. Link in my profile are now finally… Instagram has added the link sticker so I don’t have to say link in my profile and stories anymore, which is amazing.
As you mentioned, TikTok is very Gen Z focused. I feel like Gen Z is not a big fan of being sold to or maybe not yet. I’m an elder millennial. I only really know the generation from teaching college classes and stuff like that. But if I’m going on TikTok intentionally for my business, how much should I reel it in and be helpful versus when? Will it be okay for me to promote my Black Friday sale or is that like frowned upon?
Alex Rossman: It’s great question. Very little sales like that percentage, I think you use like an 80/20 on Twitter, I think that’s more like 95/5. You know, less kind of self-promotional. I think what we’re seeing now is content creators are being very kind of intentional with how they use TikTok. Especially if they’re promoting a product or service, they’re intentional with how they do it. Because like you mentioned Instagram, hey, link in my bio or things like that, it’s kind of frowned upon on TikTok, honestly.
I think that there’s ways now that we’ve seen, which is kind of cool, where you can create kind of buttons that live within the video, whether it’s a tag to a product catalog or a landing page. And you can just kind of include that within the video. It’s called a spark ad. So it’s actually you put money behind it and kind of boosts it out there. You don’t have to. There’s ways you can kind of put buttons there without the paid component. But we’re seeing kind of more towards that versus like very directly saying, “Hey, this is what I’m promoting.” It’s more so like, “Here’s a little button, click it” type deal.
Joe Casabona: Gotcha. Gotcha. So in an earlier episode, I’ll link to that in the show notes as well, I interviewed Rochelle Moulton. She wrote The Authority Code. We had a great conversation about what it’s like to become an authority. And we talked about the importance of publishing.
Maybe TikTok is just a way for you to publish and be generous. And even without the call to action, you know, is it possible to convert people who are watching your videos? I think, if you convert to a business account, you can include a link in your profile, is that good enough? Is that…
Alex Rossman: Great question. A lot of our process when we’re bringing on b2b clients is we focus on community building first. And what that is, is building your following, building your engagement. So doing a lot of content that really has no sales component at all. It’s really just giving relevant pieces of content based on whatever industry or niche you’re in.
Then after typically 90 to 180 days, that’s kind of when we see things really building in terms of follower growth and engagement, then I believe you’ve built enough of an audience to where if you did run like retargeted ads or you did run some sort of promotion, the likelihood that somebody is going to purchase from you or make some sort of buying decision is much, much greater. So again, if you focus on building that community for a good period of time, then you can kind of transition a little bit more to feeding some more promotional content.
Joe Casabona: Love that. I mean, it’s it kind of goes to a thread that’s been in this show as long as this show has existed, which is back in 2016. Right? This overnight success is not really overnight success, right? You need to sow the seeds and be patient.
Alex Rossman: Oh, yeah.
Joe Casabona: You said 90 to 180 days. Is that of publishing on TikTok daily? Or is that publish as you’re most comfortable with and interact, maybe comment on other TikToks? Is it 90 straight days of publishing?
Alex Rossman: Great, great question. It’s so funny because we see that a brand, whether it’s a business or if it’s a personal brand, is posting very frequently over that period of time. We even have some clients that are doing like five posts a day on TikTok, some even more.
Joe Casabona: Wow.
Alex Rossman: And they’re doing it very, very, very consistently. So that timeframe of 90 to 180 days sometimes can be consolidated to 30, 60. I’m still a proponent of intentional content. You don’t want to just put a bunch of garbage out there because realistically that’s going to make your brand look less appealing. It’s going to kind of look like you’re very thirsty to get followers and things like that.
However, I do think that the more you post, the frequency on TikTok, at least right now is pretty important. So consistency in content is key. Again, I think the beauty of it is because it is bite-sized content. It doesn’t require a lot of production value or things like that. You can turn those around much faster.
Joe Casabona: I’m glad you mentioned production value. Because one thing that I get hung up on and one thing that we talked about in the pre-show was the sound quality. We wanted to make sure that your mic was dialed in so that you sound as good as possible.
My friend Alistair McDermott had an audio expert on his show, The Recognized Authority, where the expert basically said, Your audio, even just 20% better audio makes people trust you more. You sound more professional, or you sound better.
Alex Rossman: 100%.
Joe Casabona: And so I get super hung up on that, especially when it comes to TikTok, which is basically you’re shooting a video and editing it on your phone in the app. I have tested Lav mics. But if I get a thought while I’m on a walk, I’m not going to have a Lav mic with me all the time. Like that’s just wild.
So, I have two questions. I have two threads here I want to pull out and one is about the production value quality wise. And the second is around batching. So I’m just going to plant the batching seeds so we can come back to it.
But let’s talk about the production value. When I record a TikTok video, I mean, I have the iPhone 13 Promax because I’m like a shill for Apple stuff. But is your phone camera generally… like your front-facing phone camera and the built in microphone, is that usually good enough, or do you recommend something else?
Alex Rossman: Yeah, great question. So you’re in the world where you’re so right. Like audio is key. Whenever I’m listening to a podcast, the voice is everything, the music selection. I mean, all of that is so key. And sometimes when you’re repurposing that for TikTok, it is good to kind of keep that going. So you can bring in that audio, the same type of experience that somebody had just listening to you.
What’s interesting, though, is the sounds and the things on TikTok that are being produced are just so bootleg is really the best way to put it. So the best example I could use is bored in the house, bored in the house (bored). You know that song it was really big during the start of the pandemic. That was just on their phone notes that was recorded. And it just went completely viral.
I think with TikTok it’s more about the concept of the content versus kind of the actual quality of that production. However, I have seen some, for example, musicians that are really big with making sure they’ve got their music really dialed in, they’ve got kind of a boom mic for kind of more acoustics in the room, they’ve got a direct into their keyboard or whatever they’re doing.
So there’s still an element of that. I think it kind of depends on who your audience is really and what type of content you’re looking to produce. I would say for somebody doing podcast, I think it would make a lot of sense to make sure you keep some of that production value, especially when it comes to audio.
Joe Casabona: Gotcha. That’s super helpful. I appreciate that. Maybe the best thing for me to do is hook up my phone here on my computer, record a bunch of videos and then move them into TikTok.
Alex Rossman: 100%.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Now let’s talk about batching. You say some of these brands are maybe publishing five videos a day or five times a day. I suspect they’re not just spur of the moment recording five videos. They’re like, “Oh, this would be good on TikTok. Let’s just do this real quick.”
So how do you balance batching, scheduling out? How far do you schedule out? And what’s the window for taking advantage of a trend?
Alex Rossman: Great questions.
Joe Casabona: I can make like 90 days worth of videos and if I only publish those, I’ve probably missed every trend in those 90 days, right?
Alex Rossman: This is the golden question for sure. Typically what we advise our clients is, you know, find a day a week or sometimes even we have like a shoot day every month where we block out four hours, sometimes longer, some different style and wardrobe changes, things like that, have all the shot list ideas in place based on trends for sure.
Usually, that does well. We shoot as much content as we can, then we go into editing, make sure we’ve got everything dialed in from that standpoint. And then we create kind of a schedule for that publishing, usually, you know, sometimes even 30 days out.
Now a trend, like you mentioned, the lifespan is very volatile. Some last really long. Like we’ve seen some that have really span to a year. And then we have some that only last a week, maybe. So, it’s interesting. And I will say that there’s ways to still… like what we advise for our clients is at least block out like 20% of the content that you shoot that’s more trendsetter. Like stuff that you generally want to create that is true to your brand, what you want to promote, versus just a bunch of trends.
You want to have a period of at least 20% of that content that’s just kind of more trendsetting than anything. But you have to be strategic with the trends that you’re using. Kind of our golden rule is if a trend has been kind of lasting for weeks prior to creating this content, it’s probably good to leverage that, if we’re starting to see some momentum.
We also have some analytics, which I know sounds super funny, but you can actually see how long a piece of audio or a hashtag challenge has been trending on TikTok. So if that duration of time is pretty long, usually that means that it’s pretty viable and it’s still a great option in terms of a trend to use.
Joe Casabona: That is really interesting. So you have analytics that kind of tell you, all right, this thing has been trending for a week or this thing has been trending for like a month. My question here as a computer nerd is, do these analytics tell you kind of what’s on the upswing and what’s on the downswing?
Alex Rossman: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: So if it’s like, “I really want to do that dance video, that success dance… I don’t know what the official name was. But you know, if I want to do that, but it’s on the downswing, should I record it and put it out immediately or say like forget about it, because it’s on the downswing or whatever?
Alex Rossman: That’s a great point. So TikToks actually created their own music charts. You know, very similar to like billboard, where you can see what the top 100 songs or sounds are on TikTok, and you can see how long they’ve been in that position, the type of performance in terms of how many pieces of content are using that video and for how long… Or excuse me, that audio.
So these type of analytics are really important to planning content for sure. And so we look at these all the time for our clients to kind of see what is the best approach. Those are actually the best is the ones that are starting to really swing upwards, like maybe they just launched but they’re really creeping up day after day. Those are the best ones to jump on.
So yeah, I think that’s a really great point is just kind of diving into the weeds of the analytics a little bit and really kind of seeing what’s working and what’s not.
Joe Casabona: That’s really cool. And this is like something that I can just see as a normal, barely alive TikTok user, right? Like I could just go and see what’s on those charts?
Alex Rossman: You can, yeah.
Joe Casabona: That’s super cool.
Alex Rossman: Absolutely, yeah.
Joe Casabona: It feels like there’s probably a big business around TikTok analytics, or maybe it’s just general social media analytics right now.
Alex Rossman: For sure. And what’s so interesting too, I have to jump in, you know, coming from another musician, I think was just kind of promising now is, you know, a lot of these licensing deals and things like that are starting to really come to fruition a lot more now.
It also means a lot of new artists are just coming in and out pretty quickly. Like, hey, they had a viral song and then you don’t hear about them. But there’s a lot more of that now. A lot of honestly the younger generation finding their music through TikTok. I know you and I had blogs that we would find our music on, we had all kinds of stuff, but TikTok started to become like a great channel for finding new music, which is kind of cool.
Joe Casabona: Wow, that is that is really cool and so interesting to me. I mean, because like, you know, I’m 36, to kind of set the bar. So I discovered most of my music on the radio, right?
Alex Rossman: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: And then eventually, whatever I pirated on Napster. I mean, downloaded totally legitimately on Napster.
Alex Rossman: LimeWire, Napster.
Joe Casabona: BearShare, all that fun stuff. And then eventually was kind of what was recommended on Apple iTunes, back when it was called iTunes or Spotify now which is really good for discovery. So kind of seeing it on TikTok specifically is cool.
And then you have the new generation of musicians who are getting discovered. Like Katy Perry and Soulja Boy were discovered on YouTube or Justin Bieber too. They were discovered on YouTube? I wonder who that first like big musician if, I mean, maybe they already exist, gets discovered on TikTok.
I know, Nat… is it Nathan Evans, the weatherman guy, the sea shanty guy?
Alex Rossman: Sounds familiar.
Joe Casabona: Got a record deal from that TikTok that he posted I guess last year.
Alex Rossman: And we’re seeing a lot more there. There’s this international band based out of Italy.
Joe Casabona: Maneskin. Is it Maneskin?
Alex Rossman: Yeah, Maneskin. They got pretty big overseas with a lot of their songs that went viral on TikTok. I think there was actually like two or three, one of them was a cover. But that’s just a good example of on what level, you know, they’ll get to I think with any band on TikTok is still kind of unknown. I don’t know if there’s yet been like a total like pop star number one type vibe yet But definitely some new interesting bands popping up through there for sure.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, awesome. I’ll just say I love Maneskin. I’m of Italian descent, so-
Alex Rossman: I am as well.
Joe Casabona: Oh, very nice. And I’ve been trying to learn Italian so I could teach it to my kids. And listening to their songs in Italian has been a lot of fun.
Alex Rossman: For sure.
Joe Casabona: Cool. Plus, they won The Eurovision. And they didn’t do an English-speaking song, which from what I understand that’s rare.
Alex Rossman: It is. It for sure is. They’re a cool band. I mean, they kind of just bring back the roots of rock and roll and they do it in really their own way. And I will say a lot of their… you know, even a recent interview they did, they contributed a lot of it, at least internationally, to TikTok.
Joe Casabona: Wow.
Alex Rossman: I mean, like the Beggin’ song, I mean, that was and it still is it’s been pretty massive on TikTok. And sometimes it’s not intentional. Sometimes it’s like, oh, a song that was really big like 20 years ago services on TikTok, we’re just like, “What’s that song?” And it’s like, “Well, I know what it is.” But some young younger kids are like, “What is this? This is cool.” It’s like, oh, that’s Nirvana. You know what I mean?
Joe Casabona: Nirvana, gosh. Nirvana is like 30 years old almost at this point.
Alex Rossman: I know.
Joe Casabona: That hurt me a little bit to come to that realization right now on this podcast.
Alex Rossman: I know. I know. Trust me.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Well, this has been such a great conversation. Just to kind of recap a little bit, it’s important for your business to be on TikTok. I think probably a good place to start, if you just want to try it out is repurpose content when you can. Kind of look at what’s trending and build that community. And then when it comes to production value, it depends on what you’re trying to do. If I’m trying to help people podcast, good audio will probably help.
Alex Rossman: 100%.
Joe Casabona: I think we’ve gotten a lot of really good advice here. Lately I’ve been getting the same answer to my favorite question to ask, but I’ll ask it anyway. Do you have any trade secrets for us?
Alex Rossman: Trade secrets. I do. I have quite a bit. But I’ll try to keep it to I would say the most value to your listeners. TikTok… you know, I went through couple of them here. But really the name of the game is you want to post as consistently as you can. Like, if you can push out five pieces of content a day, you’re going…
Like we literally have a statistic that 1 out of 10 videos that you post is going to go viral on TikTok. It’s going to have some sort of viral component. Does it mean it’s going to have 20 million views overnight? Maybe not. But you may get 10,000 views.
I bring that up, because it is very important. And it is kind of a trade secret that 1 one in 10 is going to go viral. You think about that. The more you kind of continue to post the more likely you are that you’re going to have something really catch fire.
Another thing to really leverage, there’s kind of two components of TikTok. There’s the managed services component, and then there’s kind of the do-it-yourself type platform within TikTok. You know, do your best to try to work with either an agency or communicate directly with TikTok and try to get on manage services.
What that will do is it will open you up to opportunities to potentially get involved with hashtag challenges at the brand level. It’ll open up some access to their content creator network, which is now over 4 million content creators that you can kind of tap into to help promote your service.
Joe Casabona: Oh, wow.
Alex Rossman: You’ll have access to actual music producers that are hired by TikTok if you wanted to create your own audio. So we have some brands that are like hey, we want to create our own like piece of music in time that we can have on TikTok. You’ll have access to that through the managed services platform.
So we’ve been very fortunate. We’re a TikTok agency partner, so we get to work directly with them on a corporate level. So all of our agency’s clients get a lot of benefit and value out of that. But that’s kind of a quick trade secret as it relates to TikTok.
Joe Casabona: Wow.
Alex Rossman: No, couple of them.
Joe Casabona: That’s really incredible. I was blown away by the 1 out of 10 videos you post will have some sort of viral component. And then you just blew me away even further by talking about these managed services. So if you still think that TikTok is just for teenagers who were like mounting their phone on their parent’s car and then dancing in front of it, that’s maybe what it was, but that’s not… that’s a real-life thing that I saw where I was like, “What is my neighbor’s kid doing? This is the TikTok.”
Alex Rossman: That is what’s happening. It’s funny.
Joe Casabona: Manage services and a whole sort of enterprise. So super cool. I feel like I have to have one of these conversations every few months so I get energized about TikTok again because it’s really cool seeing… Like my first one got almost 2,000 views which I was, again, blown away by because my YouTube videos get like 50 views. So super, super cool to see that.
Alex, this has been such a great conversation. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?
Alex Rossman: You can follow me on Instagram. It’s Rossy Live is my personal handle and then Rossman Media is our business account that we do post a ton of content there on Instagram. So I would highly recommend that. TikTok, we’re still building out. You guys can go do the same thing at Rossman Media on TikTok.
And then lastly, you can go to rossmanmedia.com if you want to inquire about TikTok services or social media work that we do. And you can see case studies, you can see some of our client testimonials, and go from there. But this has really been a pleasure. And thanks so much for having me.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Thank you, thank you for coming on and for sharing so much of your knowledge here. I will link to everything Alex just mentioned, as well as lots of stuff that we talked about, including a link to some of my favorite Maneskin songs over on the show notes at howibuilt.it/252.
There you’ll also be able to sign up for the Creator Crew for just 50 bucks a year. You can get ad-free extended episodes of this podcast. In today’s Build Something More, Alex and I will be talking about what it’s like being a musician because it’s something I’m very interested in as somebody who just dabbles in the drums. But thank you so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.