TikTok Masterclass for Beginners - How to Start Your Business/Educational Channel Today!

1. Intro: A lot of misconceptions about social media. To me, it is the single most powerful tool for a solo entrepreneur creator looking to start their own business. And I'm here to show you how to launch and springboard that journey. Hey guys, my name is Hans Chan. I'm a content creator, property investor, as well as author. I'm a big, big nerd when it comes to anything related to finances, investing, entrepreneurship side hustles is. So in this class, I'm going to take you through my entire process of how to get started on TikTok as a content creator yourself, and how to get your first 1,000 followers, which will form the foundation of your future business. What's the number one most important thing when it comes to starting a business is just setting up, perfecting your product or having a fancy website? No, it's none of these. It's getting your first hundred customers. Once you have customers and you're generating revenue, you can figure everything else out. Without cashflow, you don't have a business yet. By building a loyal fanbase, you solve that issue. The habits of consumers are now changing. People no longer just one of my products, but they want to form a relationship with who they are buying from you. So by building a strong community of followers who trust you are a true fan of your work is hugely, hugely powerful. It's one of the most exciting opportunities of our time. A solo creator in their own bedroom can create a bigger following the multi-million dollar companies. You don't need a fancy degree or experience or any other piece of paper giving you permission, you can literally start today, providing value to your audience. I'll take you through my entire process from finding your very own niche, the best gear, to my perpetual idea generation system. I'll be giving you all the resources you need, like my proprietary notion content production template, a list of hooks and a lot more. It's not about luck. We're not looking to create that one viral video. There's absolutely no reason you can't achieve your goals if you focus on being disciplined and you treat it like a business by being consistent. So come join me and start your very own journey today. 2. Welcome! Why create a TikTok channel: So why start at TikTok channel if you're already here, I assume you have your own reasons, but it's always good to have a clear vision in your mind. So when you're grinding and it's tough, it's clear why you're doing it in the first place. If you want a platform that reaches the largest possible audience, there isn't very much that beats TikTok at the moment. At the time of recording, TikTok has been downloaded 3 billion times and users spend an average of 52 min a day on it. And as entrepreneurs and business owners, we need to be where everyone is spending their time and there's no better place than TikTok right now. It's massively disrupted the industry to the point where giants like YouTube and Instagram have had to come up with their own version of short-form content. It's even crazier when you look at not just the downloads, but a number of monthly average users get this. There are 1 billion active users on TikTok right now. And you know what makes this even more insane? Two of the most high-population countries, China and India, don't even use TikTok. So it's clear why organizations like Facebook and Google are very worried. Another misconception is that only Gen Z is your TikTok. So then you might be thinking, what's the point of starting a business oriented educational channel, e.g. well then you might be surprised to learn that actually the majority of TikTok users are actually 30 or over? Yes, that's right, 53% to be precise, the rate of people 30 and over joining the app is growing much, much faster to use something that's unique to TikTok. And for me, a very exciting opportunity is the ability to go viral with little or no followers. It's something in the past you can't really traditionally do on YouTube and Instagram. So it's far, far more about the content you create then the number of existing followers you already have. If you're doubting whether you can personally do it. Because it just seems like social media seems to be dominated by people who became overnight successes by having a video go viral. Success on social media is not as rare as you think. So as you'll find out, I love to look at a bit of data. Here's something I want to share with you is from the state of the creator Economy report. It shows that over 46% of creators actually do this full time. Only ten per cent consider it as a hobby, and 43% are running their social media business alongside their full-time jobs. So there's nothing mysterious about it. If you're willing to put in the work, There's absolutely no reason why you can't join this massive and growing community of creators that are building them businesses and generating income as we speak, the only difference to traditional businesses, I see that as a business opportunity, social media is still relatively untapped. The opportunities are immense. Growth will see in the next five to ten years. I think it would be insane. There's no right H2. Do you think that you look at this graph here, by far the biggest category is the 31 to 40 age bracket. But what's more amazing? They are more creators in the 41 to 50 bracket and the 51 to 60 bracket than the 25 to 33,000 respondents, females outnumber males two-to-one, you. So I truly think, regardless of age, background, religion, gender, experience, whatever, people from all sorts of backgrounds and making successful careers as creators, there are no excuses. Are you willing to put in the work? Then there's the question of whether it's too late. Sure. You're not gonna get the same levels of crazy growth you would have back in 2019 to 2020. But take a platforms such as YouTube, e.g. it was founded in 2005, 17 years later, there are still created starting out fresh and getting to 1 million followers in a year or less factors, TikTok Twitter platform is still so new. There's still so much potential to grow. It's always evolving and users are starting to take it more seriously. And I think the coming years we very exciting. So I hope I've shown you now is as good a time as any to get started on your TikTok creative journey, right? Let's get to it and get this show on the road. 3. Mindset: If you're anything like me when I was starting out in business, you're probably rolling your eyes at this section. I get it. You just want to get down to the nitty-gritty stuff. You don't really see how this soft mindset stuff can add any value. But I promise you this is far more important. So say you had the right mindset, but you didn't have any of the tools or the knowledge you make mistakes, it will probably be harder than it should be, but you'll get there sooner or later. However, if it's the other way round, I will give you all the tools, gear, strategies. But if you have the wrong mindset, chances are you'll probably look back. And this will be another one of those failed ventures. You try it. The goal here is to start and build a sustainable business. So we're not trying to get lucky. Viral video will becoming an overnight sensation. We're aiming to build an audience that's engaged with you, that trusts you, which take time. So how exactly do we do that? There's no secret by consistently providing value. So this is a graph from a survey of creators of how many hours they've actually worked and how many hours they plan to work over the next year. As you can see here, the largest category are creators that have worked over 40 h. So depending on how you look at it, this can be good news. It's far, far more about how much work you're willing to put in. To visualize my point further, take a look at this diagram. It's not just for ventures like TikTok, but pretty much anything. This green line is what people normally expect when they're starting out a new venture. You devote one unit of time and you expect to get back one unit of result. But unfortunately in real life, it doesn't work like that. At the start, you're putting in a ton of work hours and hours and nothing really seems to be happening, which is this orange line here. So you expect your results to follow the green line. But actually what's happening is the orange line. And as time goes on, you're putting in more and more hours, this gap gets bigger and bigger. The expectations to the results get bigger and bigger. And then this creates what's called the Valley of disappointment. And it can be very disappointing, especially for people who expect just to go viral. So this is where most people give up. After the initial hype dies down, the value gets bigger and bigger up to a certain point. But as you can see, if you have the grit and determination to push through that valley, there comes a point where the power of compounding starts to take hold. All of that work you put in on the star wasn't wasted. It's being compounded and build upon until you finally reach an inflection point where for every unit of additional work, you're getting far, far bigger results than you thought. And then things come much more naturally as they say, if you increase something by 1% every day for a year, you don't get 365% after a year, you get 3,700%. And that's the power of compounding. But to get there, There's no getting around the fact that you have to put in a ton of work at the beginning, I find the best way to stay consistent is to have realistic expectations. It's really, really hard, but don't obsess over your followers. Instead, if there's a secret recipe for success on TikTok, it's following these three factors, consistency, improvement time. If you're making even tiny improvements, video after video, you stay consistent with it and you give it a long enough amount of time, you will succeed. So to get to that inflection point, it takes about a year to 18 months. So what I did at the beginning was set myself a goal of one year and I stick to it. No matter what, I put myself a schedule, ignore the results, get to the end of it and then reassess the beginning is the hardest because you're working and you're working, you're putting in the hours, not much has really happening and you don't know what's really going to come of it, but you're laying down the foundations that will later be compounded upon. A lot of really talented people start social media. But the issue is they have unrealistic expectations and it's really heartbreaking to see so many people give up in that value of disappointment where success was just on the other side. So for me the best way to get through it is just to enjoy it, not overthink it, and to have fun. I hope you're still with me at this point. It will be hard work, but the rewards are absolutely worth it. 4. Finding your niche: So the first thing when starting out is to establish your niche. But what specifically does that mean? A lot of aspiring creators get this wrong. Many just think it's to topic, but it's so, so much more than that. Your topic isn't fixed. You see successful creators pivot niches all the time. Rather, it's the unique value proposition you provide to your audience. So these are the things that you need to think about. So you have the topic, the format of your videos, whether it's a talking head or role-play or a vlog, What's the goal of your content is to educate, to entertain, or to share your experiences and think about your audience. What's their age? What's the location? We'll come back and explore this in a bit more detail. So this infographic shows what goes into finding your niche. So as you can see, it's not just the topic, it's that perfect sweet spot between your interests, your skill set, and your audience needs. Once you have all of that, you have your niche. It means that if someone is visiting your accounts for the very first time within 5 s, they should know roughly what the account is about. Should be able to summarize it in one sentence. Remember if you're starting a TikTok channel with a view to growing it and scaling it as a business, you need to treat it like a business and create coherent contents. And that's the thing you'll be known for. So as an example, here's my channel. It's pretty clear to anyone coming here. It's mainly about property, education, finance stuff. And you need to ask what your unfair advantages. Everyone has one. But wait, I hear you say, once I'd be locked in, if I choose a niche at the start, what if I change my mind later down the road? Well, that's very good question. And there is a method to volume. You absolutely can expand and pivot as you go along. Many, many successful creators have done it time and again. E.g. let's say you start to know about cooking Indian food. You start building a community At that point. If you want, you can pivot it to general lifestyle or culture or whatever direction you choose. But the point being, it has to be a clean niche at the start, it's really no good Looking at the very biggest creators and trying to copy their strategy. You're not to Mr. Beast or Charlie Damasio, not right now anyway. So if you copy their strategy and create a generic content, it will just be lost in the universe of TikTok videos and none of your stuff will gain traction. We're talking about the algorithm in an upcoming lesson. But e.g. if you make a video about cooking Indian food than another video about playing the piano and another video about investing in bitcoin. All that's gonna do is confuse the algorithm and it doesn't know who to show your content to. You want to be the go-to creator for whatever niche you're in. The bottom line is to remember this, you need to niche down, to blow up. Only once you've gained some traction, you can then look to diversify or to expand your niche. So let's talk about some examples. Let's say you want to create a generic Cooking Channel. Is that a good idea? Absolutely not. It's far too wide. It's not going to work if you come right out of the bat doing that. But you're competing with everyone in this huge niche. What about a fitness or a weight-loss channel? That's still too generic. Something better might be like e.g. a. Twist on traditional Indian food for people looking to lose weight. Another example, don't do a generic Travel Channel. Maybe something like traveling, backpacking on a budget with a pet. Now, you might be thinking, why would anyone listen to me? I don't have anything you need to say. And there are far more knowledgeable people than me. That's why you have to use your unfair advantage, something others don't have, that helps you stand out, but I don't have any unfair advantages are here you say, yes, you do say you have two creators, both looking to start a channel specifically on 3D printing. One is an industry expert with years and years of experience. One is a complete newbie. It's easy to see the advantage of the first one, but the second one can also pivot his position into an unfair advantage by being more relatable to the huge audience of people looking to start out into 3D printing, you'll review beginner friendly printers, document his mistakes in real time. You'll learn CAD software. It's a creator technique called Building in real time, and it's a hugely powerful way to connect with your community and form a relationship with them. Because people right now value authenticity far, far more than hyper polished content. Now, you might be thinking there isn't one specific area I excel in better than everyone else, and that's absolutely fine. It's very, very difficult to be exceptional at any one thing. And guess what? To be successful as a creator. You don't have to be, even though I'm not the best at any one particular thing, very few people in the world has my exact mix of interests. So use that as your unfair advantage so you can combine things together. So let's say you're into watches and you're into investing. So maybe start a channel about looking at the price appreciation and the investment potential of watches, instead of just a generic channel about what reviews, or let's say you're really into cars. You have good knowledge about cars and you're very charismatic. Maybe a comedy channel focused on car contents. And for me personally on my channel, I have a series where I combine my passion for handwriting with fountain pens, with breaking down property investment figures. There are thousands of social media accounts with people who write better than I do, and there are far more experienced property investors. Very few people do both. So the possibilities are really endless. So remember, don't think about creating content, but instead document, there are no unique messages, only unique messengers, which is you. So what I want you to do now as your first project is just a list down some niches, but start with broad titles of stuff you're interested in, then branch out into subcategories, then keep going down. Then you have a visual. So then you can pick and choose, Look what goes well together, what might not go well together. New ideas might come out of this. So see what you come up with most of the time. All it boils down to is that you have to keep showing up. Going back to the chart in the earlier lesson, if you're changing things too quickly, you don't give it enough time to gain traction. 5. Your Audience: Once you have your niche, the next thing you need to define, which is the most important is your audience. We talked about keeping your content coherent in the last video. And to really achieve that, it's really important to know just exactly who your audience is, what they'll find useful. So when you're generating ideas, making content, you always want to keep your audience member in mind. Once I did this, it helped me so much with anxiety, especially at the start, because at the end of the day it's not easy. You're putting yourself out there, imagining people watching and judging your stuff. But if you have a specific audience member in mind, someone you're talking to, it helps so much what it all boils down to when everything is said and done. It's not about micro analyzing the algorithm or hacks or analytics or anything like that, but simply providing value to your audience. That's the number one question. You need to ask yourself always, how can I provide value to my audience? If you do that, I promise you everything else will take care of itself. If you've already defined your niche, you should have a rough idea of who's going to watch it. And just like with setting the niche, you want to narrow down your audience when you're starting out, it's impossible to appeal to everyone. In fact, I'll make it my mission not to all of my contents. I'm speaking to my core audience and I actually actively discouraged the wrong type of viewer. Otherwise, if you try to make something for everyone, you end up appealing to know one. The more specific you are, the more your audience feels you connect with them. And the faster you build trust and the loyal community who are true fans, which ultimately is the end goal. So the best way to actually go about doing this is writing out the profile of a typical person in your core audience. I'll give you an example when I started, this is how I defined it. We have Tim, who was 24 years old and a computer science graduates from King's College London. He's into rock-climbing, reading, fashion and investing. Tim is currently in his second year of his full-time job as a cybersecurity engineer. While he enjoys his job for now, he doesn't want to be doing it forever and is always wanted to start his own side business to do that. Decided to be frugal, to build up his savings, and to make sound financial decisions. So then you'd have more freedom to take on projects that are more fulfilling to him without having to obsess over money. He's got a busy life, but he would like to learn and to improve. So in this instance, for me personally, I feel like a lot of what I went through in terms of experiences, mistakes will be really helpful to Tim to learn more about property investing. It really doesn't matter. E.g. if a property expert, what's to come along to my channel, see a view videos, and find the stuff to basic. Because I know it'll be useful to Tim because I was there, imagining myself having a chat to him every time helps drive the kind of content I create. So when I do this, it helps guide me. I'm not exclusively restricted to property content. I feel like Tim would be interested in general productivity, book summaries or other financial assets. What I'm not going to do is talk about my gym routine or my hobby of rowing because that's not why Tim is following me for your essentially helping your audience solve a problem. I can't solve all of Tim's problems, but just one is enough for him to follow me. Now, this is the exercise I want you to do. I want you to define your model audience member. How old is he or she? What is their background? What did I do for work? Or are they studying? What are their interests, their beliefs? What, once dreams, passions today have, what's one problem? Can you help themselves? Can you teach them something? Can you help them save time if you're still struggling? A quick little hug I did at the beginning was to imagine myself, but five years younger and with less knowledge. I hope that helps give it a try. 6. The Algorithm: Now wouldn't be much of a TikTok class without talking about the algorithm, the mysterious TikTok algorithm. For years, creators from across different platforms have been trying to figure out how to game the algorithm, whether it's YouTube, Instagram, and now TikTok, everything you do from how your channel grows, your audience to engagement. It's all down to the algorithm when it comes to short-form content, it's even more important because unlike traditional long-form content like YouTube, the For You page is everything. Most of the views you get on your videos will be from people who aren't your followers. So it's up to the algorithm in the For You page is TikToks feed does tailored and unique to each and every user. And it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it's to solve thing responsible for TikTok success. It's able to feed that perfect balance of stuff the user wants to see and completely fresh new contents. So having an appreciation for it, It's really important for you to succeed as a TikTok creator. Unfortunately, outside of a very select few insight, TikToks enter team. Nobody knows the precise formula of how it actually works. But the good news is, you don't need to know exactly how the algorithm works to succeed as a TikTok creator, what we do know is the key most important factors that go into the algorithm. So these are the most important ones that TikTok cares most about for you to think about completion ratio or the percentage of a video that our user watches. It's very, very important that users are actually watching most of the way through your videos. Otherwise, the algorithm will tell TikTok it's a bad video. So as a general rule of thumb, all videos under thirty-seconds should be watched 100% of the way through videos between 30 s and a minute. Should we watched 70% of the way through and any video over a minute, it should be watched at least a 50%. This should help you decide how long to construct your videos. Another factor is how many times a user has watched your video. This is especially important for really short videos. So e.g. if it's under 10 s, a user should need to watch it multiple times for it to be successful. And then you have percentage of people who watched the video. Consistency really is king for you as a creator, but also for the algorithm. By sticking to a schedule over time, the algorithm will learn that you're a serious greater and be more inclined to push some of your older content back out to the user base, pick a niche to start with and stick with it. It helps the algorithm and categorize what kind of creator you are and who to push your content out to your gain traction. Much easier if your contents all over the place. All that does is confused the algorithm and it doesn't know who to push it out to. Then you have general engagement. It's likes, comments, shares, saves, they're all great metrics. It's no good users watching all of your videos. Or if you have 100,000 followers, if none of them engage with your content, different creators have different tactics. So e.g. if it's a really funny video, you might see adds a lot of shares. Or if it's a really valuable educational video, it might have a lot of Saves. And then I'm sure you've seen lots of controversial videos on TikTok. Those are designed to trigger the user, so they are more likely to leave comments, which is also engagement and it boosts their videos. Notice none of these factors depend on the current existing number of followers. You actually have never tried to hack the system to get followers just for the sake of it all that's four is pure ego. So don't even think about silly hacks buying followers or follow for follow type schemes because they don't work. Actually the opposite, because your goal is to build a community of engaged audience. That's a true fan of view. So if you have loads of followers that never engaged, That's actually counterproductive because your videos we pushed out to a proportion of them. If none of them watch it, it tanks your ratings for the algorithm. So now, based on the things we know about the algorithm, here is my three-step formula for success on TikTok. Number one, consistency number to creating videos value by putting your audience first. And then the three, always think about how to improve your videos. I promise you, if you stay consistent over a long enough period and you create valuable content by mixing things up, seeing what your audience responds to, and you're always improving. I guarantee you will find success. Focus on making better videos over time that people want to watch. That's all it really is. It might be a really complicated and fancy algorithm. But remember, the goal of it is just to get your video out to people who want to watch it. The way it works is when a new video gets posted, it gets sent out to the initial batch of about 50 to 100 people, depending on how they engage with it, the algorithm will further push out, reassess, and repeat the process. So a viral video works a little bit like a nuclear fission reaction for those who remember their physics lessons, It's the reason you see many videos from TikTok accounts that are very, very few followers go viral with a million-plus views. Whereas traditionally that's very hard to do on something like YouTube. So again, it boils down to making the best possible videos that people actually want to watch. Try different things, be consistent with content creation and do more of what's working. Make sure your experiment. 7. Type of Content: So you've got your audience and your niche. Now it's time to think about what kind of content you want to create. So what do I mean by this? We talked about it briefly in the audience section, but it's broadly the content in your videos. So what your videos are actually about the format. So this being a course about creating a business oriented TikTok channel, I'm going to say educational videos are probably going to be a big part of your strategy. There's a couple of formats you can use. You have the simple straight up talking head video, which make up the majority of the videos on my TikTok channel, where your script out the whole video and you usually stick to one key point per video, then you have instructional videos. Here you're establishing yourself a trustworthy source in your niche and you're building a connection with your audience by providing them value. It's the perfect way to showcase your expertise on anything. It could be a DIY type thing, cooking tips, or just running through steps on your laptop. And another very popular format on TikTok is the role-play. So e.g. one person is asking the question, the other is teaching or answering the question. It can be more entertaining and easier for the audience to watch. If you're not so comfortable on screen. Initially, something that's really good for you to try is a voice-over for educational stuff. You compare that with a written format, e.g. it gives a really good visual for the audience, for my own channel. This type is actually the most popular type of video. You don't have to get fancy with nice pens or handwriting. You just need to be clear and concise with voice-overs. It can be a really good way for me to get into it because you can split the filming and the talking separately. So you can narrate by reading a script in your own time while keeping the audience engaged with on-screen content. The only thing I would say is don't rely 100% on this because I believe to form a connection with the audience, Nothing really beats face-to-face, although it's an existing business, you absolutely can. And especially if it's showcasing something like real estate or foods e.g. and you incorporate storytelling, blogs or another style. And depending on the style of your content, it can be massively successful. You can do a day in the life type videos, which are really popular in some industries, it just lend itself really well to this type of format. So e.g. if you're showcasing luxury property or of your travel type channel, vlogs or grade, or a food channel while you're writing restaurants, or even a shopping type channel, you have trends type videos. So e.g. if something will go viral, you take the same sound and then put your own spin on it. It's great for entertainment purposes, but use these sparingly. You have a story times in this current period of social media, we're actually seeing a shift in trend where people don't engage as well with the hyper polished content you've traditionally seen on Instagram, but actually created as being more authentic. Most shocking job I've ever had is as a private equity consultant for a private equity investment financial company in Dubai, right? And no, I didn't get **** on to story times are great because it's your chance to be real with your audience and for them to feel like they know you more. Sharing of personal experiences through stories can be really helpful. Generally, the ones that do well are the ones where you mess up or something really unexpected happens. So actually, that's another plus point because if something really annoying happens, like a setback in your life or in a business. Well now at least you've got some content. The thing with TikTok is attention spans are extremely short. In your story. You can't have a single debt or borrowing spot where you just ramble on, otherwise people will just swipe on you. So keep your story moving, but then you have listicles. So e.g. at the time of recording, one that's trending is the five things I would never do. Or you have top ten type videos which always do well. These are popular and easy to come up with ideas for. Another thing is just to go and TikTok and get inspiration from there. Trends are always changing what our creators in other niches doing, take the best ideas and make it your own. And don't be shy about taking ideas it, or being creative is all about in this book, steal like an artist, the author talks about how no ideas are truly unique. It's just a mixture of stuff already there. Plus to create his own interpretation. What I would add on top of that is not take ideas from creators in your same niche because it might be quite obvious, but look to other niches. So hopefully, I've given you some ideas. I know you're probably feeling overwhelmed right now, but don't worry, the key is not to overthink it overtime. I want you to try out every single format I've mentioned in this video. What you'll find on your creative journey is a type of video that your audience responds to well, is probably very different to what you think we do well at the outset. So for now, I want you to pick a two potential formats and start brainstorming ideas. As always, have fun, your goal at the beginning is to try as many different things as you can to find your natural style. 8. Post schedule & when to post: Generally speaking, provided you can maintain your quality, the more you post, the better. But just how much is that? Now the key thing to remember is to succeed. Consistency is far, far more important than going completely crazy at the beginning, posting a ton of videos and getting burnt out shortly after, you need to ask yourself, what can you realistically keep up with for at least 12 to 18 months? Not so much at the outset when you're all fired up, excited, ready to go. So it's bit like going to the gym. So you sign up to the gym. It's no point going seven days a week, waking up at 05:30 A.M. if you're only going to do it in January. But the question is, what can you keep up with six months in when you're tired, you don't feel like it other errands in life, I tried to take your attention. What's the minimum amount you can commit to? Personally, I create an average of four videos a week. You have some creators who make videos every day, and even some creators who make multiple videos a day. There is no hard and fast rule. There are many, many creators with over 1 million followers that create videos every other day. And then there are many creating TikToks every day, and then there are others creating multiple TikToks per day. What I would say, it's definitely no less than two TikToks per week. And TikTok videos work different too long form YouTube content in that the content has a much shorter lifespan. So no matter how good your TikTok video is, after a year, it's not going to attract views and followers like a long form YouTube content, e.g. so it ties back into what we discussed about consistency. You have to consistently keep pumping out good content in the main thing is to keep it fun. If it feels like a massive chore and you're dreading making the next video, you're probably not going to stick with it. So you want to strike a balance. You want to post as often as you can, but not to the point where quality takes a massive nosedive. You're completely running out of ideas. You're posting any rubbish just for the sake of it. Now on the flip side, what if you're really keen? You want to post loads of stuff, but you're worried about bombarding your followers. Well to that, I would say, don't worry, from analyzing thousands and thousands of accounts, the algorithm is designed to reach a new audience every time you post a video, regardless of your current followers throwing much so that in fact, on average, only 10% of your views come from your existing followers. So if you've done a video concept that successful, don't feel like you can't do it again, because chances are every time you post it, it will reach a new audience. I've not seen it adversely affect growth, provided you can keep the quality up. A lot of people on TikTok and make a big deal out of when to post. They say it's for the algorithm, et cetera, et cetera. It's really not that important in my experience. Here's an activity chart for my followers. Just use common sense. So e.g. I. Wouldn't post that 3AM where the majority of my audience is sleeping. It could videos will make it regardless. Personally, I vary my post times, but as a general good rule of thumb, you should post a couple of hours before peak activity and you can't really go wrong that way. So for me that would be around 06:00 P.M. like always, just experiment provided you maintain that minimum standard, play around, see what you're most comfortable with. 9. Perpetual Idea Generator: We've established earlier that we need to keep a schedule of around four videos a week, and we need to keep that up for a year. That's a heck of a lot of videos. How the **** are we going to keep coming up with ideas to get us through all of that? Well, this is actually my favorite part of being a creator. This is the core creative part where you bring your experiences, your thoughts, your ideas, you mix it all up with your knowledge and you bring it to life. Having said that, I do acknowledge it is really tough at the start, especially when you're staring and that's scary. Blank screen. So in this class, I'm going to share with you all of the techniques that I use to generate every piece of content I've ever made from the very beginning to what I still use today. So the best thing at the start is to use what I call the fishnet method. We're not going to overthink, will consider everything. We're going to do this. We'll start off with a brainstorm with absolutely every idea we can think of across all resources, media, thoughts you've had in your head. Absolutely everything. Put them out there and see what works. What are some things that you know now that you didn't know five years ago or you would have found really useful five-years ago. What sorts of questions where you're asking them? What would other people like to know? It doesn't matter if your videos aren't for everyone or if there's already videos on it, there's no videos with your unique take on the subject. One philosophy that Gary Vee uses that I really like is he says to document, not create. This is actually really powerful for creators because by thinking this way, you're actually connecting and leveraging another area of your life to help you succeed on TikTok. So your channel will be about something you're already interested in. Content will just come naturally. Or you need to do is to think about how you need to present it in a way that your audience will find useful or entertaining. So by doing this, it means that it's not a heavy lift every time you need to come up with ideas. So don't be a guru, but more along the lines of someone who's learning, who's on the journey, and you're here to bring your audience with you. This has so many advantages. You more authentic, you are more relatable and you connect with your audience far better this way. I'm personally, for me, I don't feel like such an imposter this way. And I create content much more comfortably by not positioning myself as an expert, follow this mindset and the content will come to you. So here's a couple of ideas to actually help you generate the content. The first thing go to TikTok, then the search discover bit, and then search for videos that are in your niche. Look at what people are actually watching, what's popular, then you could just copy the rough general template and put your own spin on it. Go to subreddit and discord communities in your niche. What are people interested in? What other questions people are consistently asking about? What's popular? Ask yourself, what did you struggle with at the start? What resources do you wish you'd known about? What kind of questions where you're asking, listening to the top podcasts in your niche. I always get good inspiration from these. Find the top creators in your niche and learn from them. Look through all of their videos, which ones do really well and which ones don't do work. And then trying to figure out why and what you can learn from it. Literally just asking friends, what would they like to know about your niche? But also asked what creators they're following and what videos they're actually watching. A lot of the time. There's a big difference between the videos. People want to watch, the videos they're actually watching, then you have forums and books. Final one again, is just documenting your own personal experiences. The bottom line at the start is just to create the content you want to create. Absolutely anything in your niche, all different types. But the only rule is you have to mix it up in the initial stages. Your main interests is just to find what your audience resonates with and you don't know that yet. Now I need to add that at this stage in your journey, by far and away, your number one enemy is perfection. To demonstrate the point, I want to share with you, an experiment which I read about in the book, Atomic Habits, which are highly recommend by the way, in the experiment, a photography professor splits his class into two groups. One is called the quantity group, and one is called the quality group. With the quantity group, he specifically told the class he doesn't care at all about the quality of the photos. All he cared was stood how many photos students took this and it will be graded purely on how many they took. 100 photos for an a or a B, 84, and so on. How good the photos were didn't matter in the other group. He said to students, he wanted them to submit one that perfect photo and only one photo will be graded. And then at the end of the semester, the professor was really surprised to find that all of the best photos came from the quantity group. Because while the quantity students were actually going out and taking photos, not being too worried about the final result. Experimenting with composition, lighting, the quality group, on the other hand, sat around researching, speculating, getting into analysis paralysis. And then they just ended up with one mediocre photos. So the moral of the story is that perfection comes from repetition. I do recognize it's one of the toughest things about being a creator from way back in school and work your conditioned and told that you have to spend a ton of time learning something, learning how to do it the right way before you actually do anything but content creating is actually the opposite. You have to go out there, make mistakes, learn from them, and gradually get better and better over time. Your first few videos really doesn't matter. And it has to be said, I may as well give it to you, straighten out, they will be crappy. So the best thing to do, embrace it and to get through it, I promise you, you will get better over time. The most important thing is not to overthink, just get through it. Remember, you don't need a unique message, is more unique messengers People are looking for. So feel free to take inspiration and put your own spin on it and always have your audience in mind. Never make stuff that self-indulgent, that isn't either entertaining or valuable to your audience, so they feel part of it. Now, having said all of that, Let's get the ball rolling, I want you to list out the title of five possible videos. You don't have to script it out. I just want you to have something on paper for you to work with, which we're going to input into our content creator factory in the next lesson. 10. Content Creator Factory: Once you put the techniques in the last section in practice, you should have a solid base of ideas. Not only that, but once you get into the mindset is like a light switching on. Suddenly you look at everything and automatically think, how can I turn this into a piece of content? You will find ideas coming at you from just about everywhere when you're going about your day. So say your interests and your channel is about 3D printing. You might be reading an article that inspires an idea. Or you might be working on one of your side personal projects and you think to yourself, Oh, other people might find this interesting. You never really know when you're going to be hit with a good idea. It could be when you're on the train or you're in the shower. The point is, it rarely comes at a convenient time, but annoyingly, those are the best ideas. So having a system to capture it when it's still in your mind is really, really key before it gets lost forever. So how do we keep track of all of our ideas? I hear you say, well, allow me to introduce you to the content creator factory. Not only is it designed, so you can quickly and efficiently input those fleeting ideas by use it to manage my entire content creation process from the idea stage to scripting, to film in to the post production calendar. Let's take a look. So this is the content creator factory. It's my secret weapon for the whole process. This is all built using the notion software. And for those who have never heard of all use Notion before, don't worry, It's completely free. You don't need to download it if you don't want to. It's designed to be able to run straight from your browser. The power of notion is really endless. I've never seen anything with this level of functionality. I use Notion to run everything in my life. But for now, let's focus on the creative aspect. It can look quite daunting to start with, but this is a pre-built template that you can access via the class resources. And it's very straightforward to use once it gets up and running. So as an overview, at the very top here we have a big massive Quick Entry button is at the very top, because you want to make capturing those very best elusive ideas as easy as possible. Those light bulb moments that come at random times and you want to capture and hold onto in the easiest way possible. So I've designed this template with that in mind, and here's what it looks like on a smartphone. So it's a massive button that runs across the entire screen so you can't miss it. You just hit New, jot down the idea in the lowest friction possible way. But we'll come back to that shortly. Let's have a look at the rest of the template. Alongside the Quick Entry parts. At the top, we have this toggle list here, content creation principles and goals. So let's take a look. This is the principles we always follow. And the ultimate goals we have for the channel goes on something we set on New Year's and forget about, or in this case, at the start of our creative journey. But something we always want to keep front of mind. And what we have is this here, we've got our overarching objective of building a community. And we do this by always providing value to our audience. We've got our audience profile for Timmy that we specified before and later on we're keeping our eye on the future long-term plans for future monetization and things to remember not to do. So this part will be completely unique to you. I want you to think about what the most important main objectives you personally have are for this whole venture, right? Moving on. So down here is where all the magic happens. So first off, we have the content calendar. The way this works is that every single video has its own card. So this tracks the post date of all of our content. We see that the status is put here. And we see that the status of all of these have been posted right up until the date of videos that are yet to be posted. And now we see here the status is filmed but not posted. And these and this one here is scheduled. So this gives you a very high level overview of what videos you plan to post and when in one glance. Now, next up, we have our content ideas. This is where things are automatically stored from that Quick Entry we saw above, overtime, this accumulates and it accumulates. And as you can see here, I've got a big list of random ideas that I've got. This is filtered for, say, status potential idea only. When you need to film something to keep your schedule. You never sit down and start from zero. You have this to come to video. Ideas are just waiting for you to script out and film. Then we've got our Kanban board. This view here tracks or video through the entire production process. So if we just go back to content ideas very quickly, every single video starts out as a potential idea which we may or may not decide to take further. But once we decide to progress with something, it moves through each of these successive stages. So looking back at the Kanban board, we've got writing ready to film. And once something's ready to film, what we schedule it into our content calendar all the way to just before we post and after which we have a posted content archive below here. And because each of these views are pulling off the same exact database, which is our content database. Everything will stay in sync. So e.g. here, this video here, the endowment effect, if I moved out from scheduled to filmed. You can see kanban board and on the calendar it's updated and it will update across the entire system to stay in sync. And this is how you keep track of all your content. Now let's go back right to the beginning, an input, a piece of content. We hit this big new button. Then we go down and then we select the pre-made knew TikTok idea template that I've made for you. We just expand this up. So normally this is how my workflow goes. I'll be out and about an idea we come to me and I'd simply input the title. So let's say, let's just say idea, Idea number WO three. So now it's there for me in the future. I've input my ID and literally that will be it. I'll come back out and I carry on with my day. Then in my own time, when it comes time to script out my videos, I go down to my treasure trove of ideas. I opened this content ideas toggle type here, and my idea is here already waiting for me. Now what we can do is open this and we start filling it out. So this is how the main body of the template looks like and what I'm researching a video, there will be associated links, sometimes files which go in these locations here, we click here and then we paste in our bookmark or here to upload a file. The power of notion is our most things can be accessed via slash commands. So you can type. So e.g. if you need another bookmark, you can type slash bookmark Enter, or you can type slash file, whatever you can do images, the possibilities are really endless. And if you're so inclined, you can just put slash and you can look through all the options of things you can do. It's absolutely massive. And if you want, there's no end to the rabbit hole. That is notion. Down here is where the script for the video goes. We've got the hook and then the main content. So to give you a rough schedule, here is what a completed page looks like of one of my videos. We have the script, the images, links, everything saved here for this video in one central area, we've got uploading checklist and some post-production analytics if you want to keep track of these. Now, once everything is done and you want it to show up on your content calendar, what you need to do now is go back up to the very top here. This post age, we need to select a post date, the date we plan to actually post the video. So what we're gonna do is we're going to go into here, we're going to select a date. That's all you need to do. We've got a date in here and that will now show up on your content calendar. So let's go back. So now we can see it's visible on the calendar. Of course, it's very clear here that we need to update the status. So we put in here scheduled. Now we can track it on the calendar or we can track it through the process, through this Kanban board of what videos are in the queue, where exactly they are. The combination of these two views, in my opinion, is so powerful and it keeps you organized of everything you need to do. So now once you film that, all you need to do is drag this card across to here and it will update on the calendar to any updates you need to do, you just click on the card and all of the content will be in here. So you can click on it in the Kanban board, you can click on it on the calendar anyway. So that's the system in a nutshell. It's designed to be as simple as possible, not detract from your goal, which is to consistently get good videos out there. So this has served me really well. I haven't missed a single video so far. And I hope it will help you on your journey, just like it has for me. 11. Scripting: Should you completely stripped out your videos or just talking naturally? Now there's a couple of schools of thought on this. Traditionally, for long-form content like YouTube, the best advice has always been to have bullet points, to outline all of the points you'll be talking about throughout the video, but also to freestyle around those bullet points. Of course, that way you get the best of both worlds. Videos stays on track without you rambling, going off on tangents. But you also come across quite natural to your audience because at the end of the day, no one wants to see someone read a script for 1015, 20 min TikTok and short-form content is slightly different. You have an average video length of 15-60 s. So there's much less space for you to ramble and you have to be very precise. Typically you're only making one single point. I'm trying to get that across per video, whether it's a listicle, an anecdote, a role-play format, or just one lesson, and attention spans are even shorter. You have to hook your audience and immediately make your point with no dead space. So here I do recommend scripting out everything you want to say, especially if you're not particularly comfortable in front of a camera. And let's be honest, very few people naturally are. Read your script out loud beforehand a few times. It helps if flow is much easier when you're on camera. Once you are a bit more comfortable, It's okay not to script everything out word for word, but at the beginning, scripting it out also helps you gauge how long your video is going to be. But to this day, I script and most of my TikToks out fully. I'd say the only real exception to that is if you're doing a story time, you want it to feel like you're almost face timing of friend. Plus if it's something that's happened to you, you shouldn't really need to research or to write out a script. Just talk as if you're talking to a friend. Everything else is okay to script. Once you get a bit more experience, you can of course, makes things up. 12. Gear: So just exactly what gear you need to fill them on TikTok, you'll be glad to know that you probably already have what you need to get started on TikTok if you put your phone at some point in the last five years, chances are it'll be good enough. To this day. I don't have a dedicated DSLR or anything like this. All of the contents for TikTok, I still film using my phone, the expectation and the whole vibe around TikTok videos and show form in general is very, very different to traditional YouTube long-form content. For the longer form stuff, production values have gone up and up over the years. And to compete, you really have to be at a very high level. And in some ways, it's actually the opposite for TikTok. It's much more about posting genuine content. Part of the rise of TikTok was a lot of users were getting tired of the ultra polished Instagram feed. They valued something more genuine, more on the spot, almost like talking to a friend with TikTok content. It's raw, it's relevant, and you don't have to worry too much about production value. But if you have something to say, people want to hear it, getting it out there is the main thing, even the way that App is setup, it's designed to be as frictionless as possible to help you create content. Having said that, there are a few basic things that will make your life a bit easier. I personally have my smartphone mounted on a tripod stands for all of my talking head stuff. It's 20 pounds on Amazon. It's very low cost investment, but it makes your life much easier. It's not absolutely 100 per cent essential. For my first one or two videos. I held my phone and then I used a selfie camera to make my videos. Or if you're just getting started and you want to dip your toe, there's nothing stopping you from propping your phone up against a pile of books, e.g. but eventually, I would recommend investing in a stand. It saves you the hassle of messing around with books and holding it around. And it gives you a consistent base to start with. So you can experiment with angles and things like this. And it's not very high cost. I bought mine for around 20 pounds. If you plan to do outdoor style vlogs videos, you want a hand-held phone holder, then you have the light source. If you're just starting out, it's not essential that you need to buy anything, but you do need to make sure that your videos are properly lit. And the best thing is just to sit next to a window, make sure the light is coming at you from the side on. Because if it's coming from either behind you or in front of you, it's a cause like strange shadows, natural sunlight is the best. So if you can film next to a window, otherwise, if you're happy to spend some money, I bought some lights on Amazon. They're not too expensive there. Understand. It allows you to adjust the brightness, the warmth. And again, it just helps you to be a lot more consistent. Then we have audio. If your budget only allows to buy, one thing, I would actually recommend to invest in better audio. People will sit through a bad quality video, provided the audio is good, if there's something of value in the video. However, if the video quality is great, but they can't hear what's going on. Nobody is going to sit through that. So actually audio is very, very important. And plus, the default audio pickup on your phone is actually horrendously bad and it gets a lot worse the further you get away from it. So what I would recommend is for you to get one of these, it's erode video micro. It costs about 45 pounds, but it gives a big boost to the audio quality of your videos. Then we have editing software. Tiktok is designed to make it as easy as possible for you to create content. It's actually possible to film and edit everything within the app. For me, I've never really done that. I prefer the flexibility of having an external app in terms of free software. There's a ton out there. I would recommend to try da Vinci Resolve. And if you're happy to invest, you can't really go wrong with Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple's Final Cut, which is what I use. One isn't really better than the other. It's just down to personal preference for me because I'm in the Apple ecosystem. It just makes sense and it's easier, but your mileage may vary and that's mainly it. That's another advantage of being a TikTok creator. The barrier to entry is very low, so there's really no excuse not to get started. 13. Hooks: If you want to succeed as a TikTok creator, you must, must master hooks. It's analogous to the thumbnail for YouTube videos. If you talk to the very top YouTube creators, they will tell you that if they don't know what their thumbnail looks like upfront, they won't even start filming. It's that important. Well, for TikTok, very few people actually click on videos. It's all served via the For You page. So the hook is the only thing that grabs the viewer's attention and stop some scrolling past and missing over your video. Now, I can't stress how vitally important this is without a hook, the rest of your content is useless because they'll never see the rest of your video. If you fail to hook, it tells the algorithm it's a bad video. And then it starts to self-fulfilling effect where your video will become suppressed and then eventually to tank and no one will see it. For TikTok, you have 3 s to hook your viewer. Know, that's not an exaggeration. You literally have 3 s. People's attention span is really short on the app. So you have to stand out. Don't spend opening, rambling, or giving mixed messages. Your edits have to be sharp with nowhere to time and you have to get right to the point they drop off the hook is to interrupt that pattern of behavior from the viewer, the one where they just continuously scrolling, get them to stop and to listen to what you're saying. There are a few ways you can do this. Number one, the promise to deliver value, number to storytelling. Number three, content that's designed to be controversial. Number four is entertainment, and number five is being cute. But we will focus on number one with bits of 2.4 depending on your style. So I'm going to show you one of my videos. I'm going to show you an example of how much money you need to invest in the current property market, degenerate 2000 pounds a month in rental income using two different strategies. So if you notice here, I don't waffle and within a few seconds, I go right in and make a promise to deliver value to the user. And then the rest of the video is delivering on that promise. And I keep them engaged throughout on-screen content, but you can't boil your viewer even for a second. So like with YouTube thumbnails, think about exactly how you're going to hook your viewer. Let's use another video from my channel as an example, here's a resource that feels illegal to know. It's the property investigation toward extension integrates directly into write move. Here I'm showcasing a Chrome extension that tracks property prices. So let's say I had done this video without hook and I started with something boring log. Property prices are really important. It allows you to adjust your offer and the Chrome extension app allows us to do this. And then I go on to introduce the Chrome extension app. The video would have tanked versus Here's a resource that feels illegal to note, it's the exact same content, but the delivery is really important. In the second example, I immediately pick the viewer's curiosity. They're not make a promise to as to what they can expect from watching the video. Whereas in the first one, I'm just rambling and after a whole sentence in the viewers still doesn't know what to expect. So give it a try. Your assignment for this lesson is to create a video with a specific emphasis on a hook. If you're still struggling, thin out, I've got you covered. I've got a resource for you. It's a PDF of a big list of possible hooks that you can use and incorporate into your own videos. Once you've uploaded your video, feel free to share it here. Don't worry, there's no judgment. We're all in the same boat looking to get better together. 14. Filming: Right, the bet you've all been looking forward to or dreading, depending on how you look at it. If you're anything like I was and you've never spoken on camera before, this is easily the most daunting parts of the whole process. You can prep as much as you want. But sitting there by yourself talking to a cold, silent camera lens. Just as a natural to most people. The key is to make yourself as comfortable as possible. I like to have my laptop with my script and nearby. You want to start by setting your tripod up and in you want to record a 30-second test clip just so that you know, you're centered in the shot I levels in the right place. You're getting the right amount of light. Everything looks okay before you start rolling the camera. Now before you hit that big red button, I would recommend you to read through your script once or twice when there's no pressure, but it just helps you to internalize everything and it helps everything flow more smoothly. Now when you actually start talking, remember it's okay to make mistakes. Don't worry, just carry on. I don't think I've ever filmed a video all the way through with one tag without making a single mistake when I started out watching other people's polished videos and then compare that to myself. How I was stuttering every single sentence I thought to myself, I can't do this. This is too hard. Just keep going. You're watching their final edited cuts versus experiencing your own raw version. I promise you they're making mistakes just like you are sometimes. I literally have to take ten takes for a single sentence. Just carry on all the mistakes can be cleared up in editing in terms of your tonality and your speed. This is something you kinda get more comfortable with overtime. But as the beginning, I would say, take your normal voice, speed up a little bit and jazz it up a tiny bit. So a bit faster and a tad louder helps keep the user engaged because my normal speaking voice is very measured, very slowed. And it might not be the most engaging for a TikTok video, but it depends on you. So experiment with it. Even though I prefer filming all of my videos out of the app, it can be useful to know how to do this. The TikTok app is very intuitive for creating content, and I do sometimes use it if there's a specific effect, I want to use the green screen, e.g. what you wanna do is hit the Create button and then select the effect you want to choose. If you come across an effect that you really like, make sure you save it. The search function for effects is horrendous and TikTok. So once you save it, it will always be there for you. When you come back to it. Then you can film your video, you can add text. You can use the adjust clips feature to crop your clips and to lineup texts, like I said, with the audience thing, try not to overthink it too much. Sounds stupid. Xyz, just imagine talking to a younger version of yourself. Would they have been interested to listen to what you have to say now? And if you do have a microphone, make sure to get it close to you as you can. If you have 100 pound microphone, That's right by your mouth, and then you have 1,000 pound microphone that's halfway across the room to 100 pound one will sound like get better quality. Now is tough. It is nerve wracking. Your first few videos, we'll suck just like minded and every successful creator, if you look back at their very early videos, but it's all about constant improvement. And that's the thing that counts at the start when you have no followers, I still want you to talk like you have 1 million followers. Think about how you can provide value to your audience. Carry yourself with confidence, and always think about what you can do for your followers. And I promise you they will come every time you make a mistake, take a deep breath and carry on. It might seem like I'm a good speaker on camera, but as just the power of editing, I'm here having created well over 200 TikTok videos, and I still can't make it through one without making a mistake. But for your benefit only, I'll show you something I haven't showed anyone else. I'll show you some of the footage from my roll clips just to show you where the baseline is. So this BBC article came out today saying that students having to beg. So this BBC, BBC article came out today saying students are having to beg. Oh my God. Alright. Okay, Let's start again. Let's start again. Right? So this BBC, BBC article. So this BBC article, so this may be the article. So this BBC article came out today saying that students are having to beg the electron's agents and crying as they struggled to find accommodation. 15. Optimising your videos: Hashtags are very important parts of TikTok, but there are a few misconceptions. Hashtags in and of themselves do not make your content go viral. Instead, they tell the algorithm what your videos are about and who you should send them out to when we're using hashtags, it's important to remember our core objective of building a loyal, engaged audience who is a true fan of your work we're not trying to do is to stroke our own egos and get views just for the sake of views, followers if they're not actually interested in your content. So never tried to hack hashtags. Don't put hashtag For You page or hashtag, viral or anything like this. Firstly, these hardly ever work, and even if they did, it would be the stupidest thing ever. Because all you're doing is subtracting a loader, randoms or trolls who aren't interested in your videos and then not part of your target audience. So they're not going to watch your videos. And if your video is have a low watch through, rate it a tank your future videos. Remember this is a marathon, not erase behind the fancy algorithms is just people. And to build trust with people, it takes time. That's all it is. So how should you do it? Tagging your video, you should use at least four hashtags. In my experience, using more doesn't adversely affect performance, but you should do at least a minimum of four. The best strategy when starting out is to use a mixture of more niche hashtags that don't have a ton of use. Because if you use a really broad hashtag as a beginner, it's almost like not using a hashtag at all. Your video will just be buried out there among the thousands and thousands of other videos using now really broad hashtag and your video won't be noticed. You can tell how big a hashtag is when you're just about to post a video and you're putting the description of the video, you put hashtag, you start typing, and then it will tell you how many views that a specific hashtag has had. E.g. if I type hashtag, learn on TikTok, you can see here it's got an absolute ton of use as a beginner, it's no good if all your hashtags are this big. But on the other hand, something to obscure isn't great either because no one watches those videos. I find that if you put at least one or two hashtags between the half 1 million to 10 million view mark. That should be a good sweet spot. You'll need all of them in that range. Just one or two is fine. And then you throw in a couple of bigger ones up to 50 million. Probably not necessary to go much bigger than that. The best thing you can do is always two experiments. Never stick to one set formula. So start with this as a baseline. Keep track of it and keep playing around with it to see what your sweet spot is for your specific niche. I'm still experimenting all the time myself, especially as the algorithm is always changing. Tiktok themselves like to promote different things at different times. So what I tell you now could have changed, but the philosophy remains the same and just keep mixing things up. Now recent trends have shown that more and more people are turning to TikTok and using it actually as a search engine with loads of people going directly to TikTok for things like restaurant recommendations, holiday travel destinations, things like this. One thing not many people know is that to rank well for TikTok search is not using hashtags, but actually text within your video. Tiktok is able to index all the texts that you used inside the video. This actually works far, far better than hashtags, e.g. this video on my channel, I was able to rank it at the very top simply by using the relevant texts in my video and helped me gain a lot of traffic that way over time, you become an authority figure in your subject area. If your videos are consistently ranking highly when people search for a particular subject and you start building up that trust. 16. Housekeeping: So we're nearly there. Before you go off. I've got a few housekeeping tips, depending on what channel yours is, you may or may not want your contacts to see it at the beginning, by default, TikTok or access all of your contacts and recommend any video you post to your contexts. If that sounds like a nightmare to you and you want to keep your TikTok life and your personal life separate. Don't worry, it's an easy fix. Head to your profile, click on the overflow symbol on the top right, then settings and privacy, then privacy. Then click here, suggests your accounts to others. You can now uncheck contacts, Facebook, friends, etc. Tiktok also gives you the option of choosing between a personal and a business account. There are a lot of differences between the two. But naturally the question is, which one is better for me? Now on a very high level, I'd say I recommend to go for the business account if you already have an existing business that you're using TikTok to leverage. So if you already have a photography business, say e.g. or a cookie business or a travelers day agency, something you want to promote using your TikTok to use the business account. Business accounts that gives you a lot more fancy features to help you market your business. The business Creative Hub analytics, keeping track of what campaigns are working and things like this. On the other hand, if you're a solo creator, where you are the brand that you want to watch content from other creators. You want to interact with other creators and make connections than a personal account might be the better choice. There's no difference in terms of the growth potential of either account. I've come across thousands of accounts from accounts with over 1 million followers, with a business account and a personal account. With a personal account, you have full access to the entire suite of sounds, whether with a business account, you're only allowed to use the free for commercial use sounds, even if you don't use trending sounds as part of your strategy, a business account limits who you can do it with, e.g. in terms of monetizing, if you're in the personal account later on, you can apply for the TikTok. Next, create a program which helps you monetize and leverage your audience. Then you have the TikTok creates a marketplace, and then the TikTok Creator Fund at the moment is dismally small, but it might not always be this way. So it might be worth staying in, but there's really no need to overthink it. You can easily switch between the two. You can do it anytime. And there's no penalty as far as I know for picking either one. So to do that, go to your profile, click on the overflow button on the top right, then settings and privacy, and then manage account. Then in the bottom half, you have switched to business account. And that's really it. Finally, I do believe in building sustainably, but there are some hacks that can work at the right time. So I want you to remember that engagement. Boost your videos, good or bad. So some accounts really exploit this by making content that's designed to evoke anger or to create some sort of reaction so people respond on a lesser scale. Well, you could try is to put in the mistake somewhere in your video or a spelling error. So when someone points it out, that does count as engagement, you can show discounts or key info for just a millisecond so people are forced to watch the video again. And then of course, the infinite loop works really well, where the end of your video loops back to the beginning of the video. But remember, never overuse these. Always think about your audience. If you're consistently in knowing your audience is not gonna be good for you long term. 17. Next steps & staying in touch: I just want to say a big well done for making it all the way through to the end of the course. Statistically, only around ten per cent of people make it from starting the course to making your wet all the way through to the very end. So I'm really, really proud of you. If you keep up this level of consistency and work ethic, there's absolutely no reason why you can't achieve all of your goals. As a reminder, it's not about hitting it big without one viral video. It just goes to show that being a successful content creator isn't about being lucky, but about consistently showing up and putting in the work. We don't treat her like a lottery, but building a long-term sustainable business and has very little luck in that. It's about building a habit, having a system in place. So it comes natural to you, if you want to do more of something, minimize the friction to it. In this case of making more TikTok videos, e.g. what you wanna do is make it as easy as possible when an idea comes to you to input it into the content creator factory, have you stand already set up? So it's not a big hassle every time you want to film something, then it's not about willpower and also a reminder to all you perfectionists to get rid of that mindset. Remember the story of the photography class? I've never in my life matter creator, that doesn't cringe when you show them the early videos, just embrace a journey and own it. Enjoy the process, looked to get better over time and always favor taking action. But really the main thing is just to have fun and enjoy the process. I know it's hard at the beginning not to obsess over your followers. I know I was doing it, but I promise you, if you enjoy the process, you get better over time and you stay consistent, everything else will come. My favorite analogy is to treat it like a video game. When you're learning about the game, you're trying to improve, you're putting in the grind to get to the higher levels. And just like a game, you're trying to have fun. We're trying to play it to the best of your ability, but you're not playing it too seriously. Remember, no one likes to play games with people who take it too seriously. So just enjoy it. You would never play a game. You absolutely hate just to level up your character, that will be pointless. It's a similar situation here, but like I said, very few people make it to the end. So I'd love to stay in touch. This is really exciting. It's just the end of the course, but it's only the start of your journey. You can connect with me via my TikTok if you have any questions or feedback or you just want to say hi, dropped me a DM on Instagram. You can email me, you can sign up to my newsletter for events, updates, live events. I can't wait to hear from you all the best and let me know how you get on.