0:00 Dan

Hi, Pat the podcast editor here. Only joking it’s Dan. On average TikTok’s 1 billion users spend 45 minutes a day on the mental platform. And in today’s episode, I share some practical tips and tools you can use to come up with 100 plus TikTok ideas in 15 minutes.

Anyone who is considering creating content on TikTok or currently creating content on TikTok. This is like the gateway to help you do that. So, get ready to overcome that creative block and turn into a TikTok content machine. This is episode 98 of the business anchors podcast.

0:49 Lloyd 

How can you come up with 100 TikTok ideas in 15 minutes?

0:52 Dan

You listen to this episode of course Lloyd.

0:55 Lloyd 

Okay, but what are you going to say in this episode? Dan?

0:58 Dan 

Well, we’re going to be talking about coming up with TikTok ideas.

1:01 Lloyd 

The way you started that sentence reminded me of the guy that says ‘It’s Ollie Ball here’

1:06 Dan

Oh yeah.

1:07 Lloyd  

I think that’s on TikTok, isn’t it?

1:09 Dan 

Have you seen the chip shop thing going viral?

1:12 Lloyd 

Binley? What is it?

1:14 Dan

What’s it called again?

1:14 Taylor

Binley Mega Chippy.

1:15 Lloyd 

Binley mega chippy.

1:19 Dan 

Yeah, just random. But yeah, that’s relevant cuz it’s come from TikTok. But the reason I wanted to do this episode is that we work with lots of brands and support them with TikTok, and we’ve got our TikTok channel.

And there are lots of really great tools that we’ve discovered to come up with cool TikTok ideas and I thought business anchors would want to listen to us sharing what those tools and ways of coming up with content ideas.

1:48 Lloyd 

But aren’t we a bit old for TikTok isn’t helping girls dance and lip syncing dan?

1:51 Dan 

Well, lots of people think that but you’re wrong.

1:55 Lloyd 

I thought I wasn’t right.

1:58 Dan 

If you’re a business anchors listener, you’ll know that we’ve been banging on about getting on TikTok for ages now. But there’s a crazy amount of organic reach that you can generate from Tiktok. Like, remember even used to generate for Facebook?

2:10 Lloyd 

Yes, we use the I mean, we used to get most of our business through Facebook. Yeah. And the next year, most of our business might be through TikTok. Yeah, who knows?

2:19 Dan 

So yeah, there are a number of different kinds of tools and people that you can follow that will help you come up with different.

2:26 Lloyd

Before we start that, is this guidance, just so the anchors know. Is this for people who like businesses and brands that are already on Facebook? Or not Facebook? Already on Tik Tok to improve what they’re doing? Or is it for people that aren’t even on it?

2:44 Dan 

I think both Okay, anyone who is considering creating content on TikTok or currently creating content on TikTok, this is like the gateway to help you do that. Because there are some really, and again, we’ve only learned this through creating lots of content for TikTok, but there are some really basic and quite easy things you can do and look at to get ideas for TikTok that have a good chance of doing well. So yeah.

3:16 Lloyd 

Okay, thank you. Thank you for that answer.

3:18 Dan 

Um, so yeah, so shall I get into one of the first things that go for it. So this is, if you’re on TikTok, you would have seen this before, but on TikTok, there’s a variety of people who I don’t know if they’re like a job is just being a creator, or if this is just something they don’t have spare time, but they create lots of content that tells you what the latest trends are to tap into.

3:43 Lloyd 

They are making it within TikTok? They’re makingTikTok about what’s?

3:47 Dan 

Very meta, but they create TikTok telling you this trending sound is currently quite small, but it’s blowing up. You should create.

3:56 Lloyd 

I haven’t seen that.

3:57 Dan

Yeah, I mean, this is, yeah, this is where I get a lot of my personal TikTok of ideas for.

4:03 Lloyd 

I just thought you were really clever.

4:04 Dan 

No, no, no. Okay. But yeah that’s what they do. They talk about and, from our experience of creating TikTok for brands and ourselves, tapping into trends is one of the most effective ways you can reach the largest audiences and engage that audience.

And for those that don’t know, like, trending sounds TikTok is all about like tapping into trending sounds and you can it’s not just weird dancing. I know you mentioned that earlier Lloyd. But you can create relatable TikTok’s Like with relatable kind of text overlaid over it using sounds that lots of people are creating videos for.

4:43 Lloyd  

Because that was one of my, one of my, like, critical thoughts on this, of using tapping into trends for your business and for brands. I was thinking is there I suppose I was thinking, Is there any point of tapping into these trends if it’s not relevant to your business and you’re just trying to get attention for the sake of it.

But then I suppose, thinking about your TikTok, I think actually your account is quite a good example of how to link certain trends with what you do as a job and what we do within our business.

5:15 Dan

And you’re exactly right. So just tapping into trends, that’s nothing related to your business I don’t think is the best approach to go for because you, then you’re just going to build an audience of people on TikTok who like funny videos, whereas what I’ve done with my kind of personal TikTok is and with our Knowlton TikTok the guys do is trying to tap into trends that are relatable to marketers from brands.

So like things like office culture, and things that are going on in the office, or another thing that I’ve kind of spoken about is sales in marketing. So when like an agency is pitching to marketers from a brand and that kind of thing. So it’s about trying to think about starting with the who we always talk about this, like, as a business, if you’re using TikTok, you really need to think about who is it you’re actually trying to convince to do something?

Yeah, who is it you’re trying to attract, and convince them to buy your product or invest in your services? And once you, once you understand that, then you can start to create kind of TikTok’s that tap into these trends that we’re going to talk through, but it’s related to what you actually do, then you’re building an audience of people who are going to help you achieve what you want to achieve, rather than like 12-year-olds that just like being on TikTok.

6:29 Lloyd 

Yeah, because I’ve seen some business owners or like, people in prominent roles within businesses. And maybe this is just they’re doing it for fun and to learn about, the platform. So fair enough, but I’ve seen some of them are putting out generic tiktoks that are just in line with trends, nothing to do with what they’re doing in their business.

And I have kind of thought, is that? Is that more to do with ego? Because I suppose if you were putting out more generic relatable trends to a much wider audience, you like for your personal account? What’s the handle for your personal account?

7:02 Dan 

Dan Knowlton.

7:05 Lloyd 

You probably could have grown nine could be growing quickly. But I guess you’d be growing a very generic audience, there might be lots of 15-year-olds in Australia, rather than people in marketing and businesses that we could potentially work with down the line in the future.

7:21 Dan 

I think there are to kind of go back on that there are other creative ways that you can integrate what you do. So it’s not just funny videos that will relate to everyone. Like, recently, I’m not gonna give too much detail away because it was still ongoing. But we’ve got an opportunity to work with a really exciting company. And we’ve done lots of research on their current TikTok. And what’s really working for them is original content.

That’s the content that they’ve produced that they’ve repurposed for TikTok with a relatable kind of text overlaying it that will be relevant to lots of people. But the way they’re integrating what they do is by sharing their own original content that they’ve produced for their own TV shows. So going to number one, this is these are the accounts that you can follow.

You know, I mentioned the accounts to follow. So there’s a really good go on TikTok called trend Bible. And she every day she’ll post as I mentioned, this sound is blowing up, what you need to do is say something that you remembered when you were younger, and yeah, that kind of thing. There’s another one called wave wild. So it’s spelt WAVE. WYLD. That’s another great one.

8:38 Lloyd 

Controversial spelling.

8:39 Dan 

I know that’s difficult on a podcast to try and give you the spelling.

8:42 Lloyd 

Yeah, good luck finding that one.

8:43 Dan 

Another one is called Sydney socials. Yeah, there are just a few that you can look at. So just looking at they’re just following them on TikTok alone will help you come up with shitloads of content ideas because they’re literally telling you.

9:00 Lloyd

Well, I suppose if they’re telling you loads of trends, you can then handpick the ones that you think you could make. You could adapt it to make it relevant to what you’re doing and what’s important to you and what you’re posting on your account.

9:11 Dan 

Exactly right. And because the TikTok algorithm is so clever, when you start to follow these types of accounts, and you start to interact with their content, you’ll start to see content from other accounts that you don’t know that do this thing where they tell you trending sounds that you should tap into.

9:27 Lloyd 

That makes sense. You’ve seen loads and I haven’t seen any.

9:29 Dan 

Yeah, exactly. Because I’m constantly watching their content. So that’s one way that you can come up with loads of TikTok ideas, and I’ve got quite a few for you. Okay. So the second way have you ever heard of later?

9:44 Lloyd

It runs just after now, doesn’t it?

9:47 Dan 

No, no. It’s social media.

9:49 Lloyd 

Ah, right. I was talking about how you describe the time.

So have you heard it later, the social media tool?

No, I haven’t actually dan.

9:58 Dan 

So it’s quite a cool tool for scheduling content on Instagram, but what I think is even better is their blog. They’ve got this blog where they share really useful strategies and tips and tutorials on how you can create content for Tik Tok and reels.

But the one thing that they share, which is really useful for coming up with TikTok ideas is they’ve got a trends blog, and also a real trends blog that they update every week with the latest trends from that week that you can tap into. Okay, they give you examples and how you can use them. So literally just Google later TikTok trends blog or later rails trends blog.

10:40 Lloyd 

Now I can see how people get hundreds of ideas from this, simple.

10:47 Dan 

I think because I, personally am spending a lot of time on TikTok and I have to come up with ideas personally, all the time. I’ve spent so much time looking for all these things to make my life easier.

10:58 Lloyd

We do need to talk about how much time you’re spending on TikTok time. There are some other things we need to do.

11:04 Dan 

It’s useful though, it’s useful for us to come up with ideas. So number three, you can use TikTok, inbuilt search functionality to search keywords that are related to your business or industry. And then look at the search results. And look at the top videos. And you can get loads of great ideas from videos that people are already creating, that are getting lots of views and engagement.

And you can like for example, the way I use this for our marketing agency is I’ll type in keywords like a marketing agency, or social media marketing, and then you can look at the top search results. Look at the top videos, you can get ideas from videos, people are already creating that doing well.

And it’s quite clever because you’re basically using data to see what other people are doing that’s trending. And then you can get inspiration and ideas to create your own style of that video. Creating your own trend.

It’s one of those things that seems too simple. But it makes sense on most social media platforms. So if you can see the best performing content in your kind of area, it makes sense to be inspired by that not necessarily just copying and I know on TikTok I think a lot of people do literally just copy it. But being inspired by the best stuff and noticing patterns in the best stuff. That just makes logical sense, doesn’t it?

Another thing I haven’t mentioned, which I feel really strongly about is.

12:18 Lloyd 

Number four or 3.5?

12:20 Dan 

This is just the point. TikTok, there’s such a low barrier to entry to create content on tick tock. So like, if you’re, if you’re listening to this and thinking, Oh, I don’t like making videos, or I don’t have a fancy camera, or I don’t know how to properly edit videos, TikTok is a really great platform to start with.

Because one, highly produced videos where people are really skilled at editing don’t do as well as lower production value videos that are cleverly tapping into trends. Like if you think you’re good at thinking strategically and implementing these things that I’m talking about, you can come up with creative, really creative ideas that will pop or you don’t have to be good at editing or being on video that kind of thing. So yeah, just a little point.

13:06 Lloyd

Basically, no excuses because this one you don’t need all those skills that previously you’ve made excuses as to why you can’t use that platform.

13:13 Dan 

You literally have no excuses for not creating content on TikTok. So, I don’t want to hear you messaging us saying Oh, I’m scared. I don’t want to do that.

13:20 Lloyd 

Yeah, I don’t want to hear that other way.

13:25 Dan 

So the next one, that one another way that you can come up with lots of creative TikTok ideas is to use TikTok’s creative centre. Have you heard of TikTok? Creative Central? haven’t actually it’s fairly new. So you probably haven’t. Okay, but it’s basically on there. There’s loads of inspiration for tick tock, so you can create something that ticks through actually created? Yeah. And they’ve got a trend section, which is another resource to look at what TikTokis saying is trending. And they’ve got like a breakout section as well.

So they’ve got big trending content that’s like big artists and stuff who musically is trending, but then they have smaller, more niche videos that are really starting to grow. So you can get loads of ideas from there. There are literally so many places where you can easily get ideas for TikTok I’m hoping people actually do this stuff because it’s really useful.

14:15 Lloyd

Yeah. Nice. I already feel like they’ve got 100 but are there more ways.

14:22 Dan 

There is.

14:24 Lloyd 

Nice, give me more ideas.

14:27 Dan 

Fourth way.

14:28 Lloyd

Is it fourth or fifth?

14:31 Dan 

I think it’s fourth. Okay. So this is really simple, but really effective is to actually spend time on TikTok on your FYU page, which is basically when you open the app. It’s how you scroll through content.

14:47 Lloyd

FYU?

14:49 Dan 

FYP page, for your page sorry.

14:53 Lloyd

All right, boomer, on your FYU page on Tic Tac.

14:58 Dan

My mouth doesn’t work as fast as my brain thinks.

15:03 Lloyd

Open up Tic Tac on your FYU page, you’ve seen some things that are trending using your hashes.

15:14 Dan 

So if you actually spend time on tic tac, and so as you spend time on the for you page on TikTok and scroll, scroll through and actually start consuming some content, you’ll start to notice TikTok’s where people are tapping into the same trending sounds or doing the same trends. And just spending time on the platform, you’ll start to notice. You’ll just know what’s trending because you’ll keep seeing the repeated trends happening. That’s just another small tip. I’ve come up with random ideas before because I thought, oh, in the last half an hour, five people have tapped into the same trend.

15:49 Lloyd 

Is there any strategy you use to kind of make notes of those or save them or anything just to make sure?

15:55 Dan 

Yeah, you can, you can click save on on TikTok.

15:55 Lloyd 

Makes me sound like ooh interesting.

16:02 Dan

But something I actually do is I like, I like the ones that give me inspiration. And then on your own profile, you can click on the heart, and you can see all the stuff you’d like just easily. So whenever I’m coming up with the TikTok idea, I just think I just look at that heart section. It’s really useful.

16:21 Lloyd 

Nice little tactic there.

16:23 Dan 

Little tic tac. One final thing? Yeah, I know, you’re already sick of me.

16:28 Lloyd 

Im not sick of anything Dan, I’ve got 1000s of TikTok ideas now.

16:34 Dan 

One final thing, this is a really cool tool called copy.ai.

16:36 Lloyd

Copy I. That’s so I pronounce it.

16:42 Dan 

And in there, they’ve got a section where you were that it automatically comes up with hooks for content. And like, like, like an idea for here’s five ways you can improve. You’re right, you give it you use the settings to give it like what industry you’re in, and that kind of thing. And click the button and it just comes up with interesting cookie content ideas, okay. And you can just do that and come up with it tells you content ideas that you can use.

17:11 Lloyd

So all this time, I’ve just thought you’re clever coming up with these ideas? And actually, you just have these tools that do it all for you. Yeah. Wow. Shouldn’t have given that away.

17:20 Dan 

Yeah. So hopefully, hopefully, I know, this has probably been a bit of a shorter episode. But hopefully, anchors. Also, if you’re kind of sitting on the edge should I try TikTok or not? I really think that TikTok is going to continue to grow and the audience is going to continue to grow and age up as well. So if you are still thinking, Oh, it’s 12-year-olds dancing. It really isn’t. When you look at like the brands that are on there, and how much time people are spending there.

17:48 Lloyd 

I think it’s following exactly the same parts that other social media platforms that people that it’s a no brainer to use for business now went on previously, you know, kind of a decade ago, like Facebook. Some of you might not be old enough to know this. But Facebook, we went through exactly the same thing of basic.

You go, oh, Facebook for business? Why would I ever do that? And then it just conversations of, oh, no, actually, a lot of people. It’s not just kids and university students on it. Now there are more people on there. And it was all the same conversations. And then it’s like, oh, it’s not just kids, and then you Oh, you can do ads now. And then a couple of years later, it was like, Oh, it’s a no brainer to run ads on these platforms as a business.

And I think it would be naive to think that TikTok is any different, that we’re not just repeating this process of people doubting it. And then it’s, it could be a tool that really you’re going to be a disadvantage in the next two or three years. If you’re not using it.

18:45 Dan 

History leaves clues.

18:47 Lloyd

It does it does. History leaves clues, Dan Knowlton 2022.

18:52 Dan 

And even like one more thing, just one final thing, because I’m quite passionate about this. So even if you’re a b2b business, and you’re thinking tiktoks, not for b2b, you know, doesn’t even help us some of my most viral LinkedIn posts that have attracted the most lucrative b2b deals are tiktoks, that I’ve downloaded and posted on LinkedIn.

So as a b2b business, we’re generating some of our most lucrative business through utilising the TikTok platform and then distributing that content in the places where our decision-makers in the b2b world are.

19:27 Lloyd

So even after everything was said, you’re still doubting us that it’s a good idea to be on TikTok as a business. You can just get in there, for now, to take those TikTok and put it on LinkedIn. Yep. And then in two years, you can thank us when you’re getting all your business leads through Tiktok. And say, Lloyd and Dan Knowlton, we’re right there so brilliant and Lloyds got a great beard.

19:51 Dan 

Your beard is looking pretty good. To be fair. I will give you that.

19:54 Lloyd

Thank you. Thanks very much. History leaves clues.

20:05 Dan 

Thank you for listening. I hope this has been a good episode. I’m really excited for the next episode, which is gonna be all about LinkedIn.

20:12 Lloyd 

Oh, if you’re so excited. Why didn’t you sound excited when he said it?

20:18 Dan

I’m really excited about the next episode.

20:20 Lloyd 

Cool. Me too! Right? I mean, if it’s already out, let’s listen to it together now. Or if it’s not come back next Thursday. See you in your ears next week or in a minute.

Hopefully, this has been useful and helped you to create lots of TikTok ideas in no time at all. If you have any more questions or want to know how Knowlton can support you Start A Conversation with us. 😊