TikTok - Should You Bother?
If you’ve been avoiding TikTok, this post is for you.
Have you been holding back from marketing your online business on TikTok? Perhaps you think TikTok is…
Only for Gen Z’ers.
A platform for dancing.
Not a great place for marketing.
I’m here to tell you: There’s more to the story! Before you disregard TikTok entirely, listen to the latest podcast episode where I share a little more about how TikTok works and why you should use it for your side hustle. Tune in now.
CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!
Show Notes:
Hey, Risers. Welcome to episode 158 of Empathy Rising. So I have done nothing all day except for sit on my couch and make TikToks, which is totally appropriate for today's episode. It's just been one of those days where I have been super duper lazy, but I looked at the clock and I had an hour and a half before I had to go get my girls from school. I have two episodes to record to make Hailey happy, so I get them to her on time. And so I'm sitting down and I'm recording. That's just how it worked.
But I thought since I've been doing TikTok all day, I would go ahead and talk about TikTok with you guys. Most of you listening are probably like, oh, hell no, I'm not doing a TikTok, like, you couldn't pay me. But I just want to share my experience with it. I've been using it since March of 2022. So, depending on when you're listening to this, that is a couple of months now. And there are things I really like about it, things that I don't love so much about it, but I want to share what I'm doing with you guys in real-time, and also kind of some suggestions that, you know, maybe you should consider getting a TikTok. So we'll talk through that.
I know I just did an episode all about how you don't need social media at all to grow a side hustle, and I stand by that. You don't need social media at all to grow a side hustle, and you do not need to think of yourself as an influencer. As I talk about TikTok today, I don't want us to think about, like, getting TikTok famous. That's not our intention.
Remember our intention with whatever we're doing is always to be top of funnel—to be driving people through our sales funnel to end up as buyers in our business. Not to, you know, sell other people's stuff or whatever, unless that's what you want. But that's not the type of marketing I'm talking about here.
But if you do want to use social, if you enjoy social media, or if you're curious about social and you haven't thought of TikTok, if you've written it off or you haven't thought of it as the platform of choice for you, I want to ask you to think again. And like I said, I'm going to share my experience and what I would have liked about it and what's rubbed me a little bit wrong way.
So if you're anything like me, you probably think TikTok is like a stupid dance platform for gen Z. No offense to gen Z if you're listening, I love you. But that's probably what the conceptualization for TikTok was in your mind, and that is true in a sense. There are definitely dance trends. There are definitely crazes that go on the platform that are sometimes fun to play around with and to try.
Or you may be like me, who stays away from those types of things and doesn't touch them with a 10-foot pole. And that is totally your prerogative, right? The platform still definitely trends a little younger than even Instagram... we used to consider the "young" platform. But now Instagram is solidly the millennials platform and TikTok is solidly the Gen Z platform, and there's a lot of dancing going on. There's a lot of lip syncing going on. There's a lot of pranks and things like that going on.
But what I like about it is the way they refer to it as there's different sides of TikTok, and so if you're on that side of TikTok, it's probably not going to be very fun for you. But when you get into the right side of TikTok, the content creators that I follow are really socially active. They're like activists in their own little way. There's a lot of, like, green screening going on where people are sharing and literally teaching. They're teaching in, like, three minutes, and I learn a lot on that platform—more so than I do on any other platform. What I love about TikTok is that you don't have to be perfect on the platform.
Most of the creators I follow... If I'm on the mom's side of TikTok, they're in like messy buns, no makeup on. If I'm on the feminist side of TikTok, kind of same thing: Messy buns and no makeup on. So I don't feel as if I have to be perfect or perform on TikTok. Like I might on other platforms. And if we get into the demographics, over 30% of TikTok users are older than 25, and a good chunk of those 30% are even over like 34.
So then we're solidly, like in my age group, and most of you guys listening, like the over 34 over 40 age group. They are on TikTok, and the content they're creating and the content they're consuming is much more of this activism content as much more of this educational content than it is the trends. We also need to think of the fact that TikTok is less than 10 years old. If we go all the way back to its inception, which it actually started as a music platform, which is why the singing and dancing makes sense because it's kind of carried over.
But it's starting to slowly fade out as educational content takes place. But within the 10 years of the platform's invention, it is the third-largest social media platform. Right behind Facebook, behind Instagram, there's TikTok, which is just a testament to its popularity.
What makes it popular is that all content is video. We've known for a while... I mean, if you follow me for a while, even back when I was talking about practice building before I even started moving into side hustles for therapists, and I was just kind of talking about building your practice. I was always talking about video marketing and that was what, five years ago? And so we always saw... what cliche am I looking for? The writing on the wall.
We always saw the writing on the wall that video marketing was going to become king or queen. And that's just even more so now. Five years later, we now have a social media platform that is all video. No text. The text that you put in the caption to talk is supposed to be like less than a sentence, I guess it's supposed to be a phrase, two or three words. Like they don't want written content on there. They want the videos to speak for itself. Also short-form content. The longest videos that some creators can create on tech talk are 10 minutes. Me, as a newer creator, the longest one I have is three minutes. And you guys know me, I'm pretty verbose. So I try to do the 15-second ones, and I tried to do the one minute.
In fact, today, one of the ones I recorded, I started on the one-minute setting and I got halfway through the thing and I'm like, there's no way this has spitting under a minute and so I had to start all over, and switched to the three minutes setting. So that's mostly what I'm doing is just sitting down and talking about something I'm passionate about. One and a half minutes to two and a half minutes, and then I hit publish. Sometimes if I'm feeling like it, I throw a filter on my face just to cover up a zit or something like that, but I'm not going for like the high makeup look or anything like that and then I call it a day, right.
Once in a while, I'll change my shirt. So it looks like maybe I didn't create four videos back to back. But sometimes I don't even do that. So it just does not have to be perfect. And so I think those are kind of the characteristics that lead to its popularity. It's all video-based, it's short form, and you can create on the fly and in the moment. Not everything is highly produced.
Now there have been some controversies with the platform early on. A few years ago now, I didn't look up the dates, but there were things like, you know, suicides taking place on the platform. People going live on TikTok and committing suicide, and that obviously is traumatic for the people who just happen to stumble upon that live, and traumatic for the family members. I mean, just that's... it's terrible. It's terrible. That was happening.
There's also been trends... this is what happens with these trends sometimes as we have basically like an online or virtual digital version of mob mentality, and we've seen it on TikTok. And so it's something you have to be careful about, and it's something you have to be careful of, you know. Certainly, you don't want to feed into that. Not that anybody listening would. This was last year where... and it happened actually locally here where there was a trend on TikTok to vandalize school property, vandalizing lockers, vandalizing bathrooms, vandalizing just different school property.
And the local high school here in Alabama, they actually had it happen to their high school bathrooms because of the TikTok trend. The most recent one that I've seen was since I've been on the platform in March, where there was this song that boys, and I call them boys, were pretending to ask girls out for a date, with the plan to unalive them, a plan to murder them, and talking through how they would do it and stuff like that with a song.
So obviously I think there are drawbacks to all social media platforms. Will I let my children have TikTok if it's still around when they get digital devices of their own? Probably not. Right. Or it will have, like, high limits on it. So I'm not saying that the platform itself is without issues or is without problems.
The platform also has tremendous business capabilities. So if you are interested in using it as a business builder, that's what I want to talk about going forward is what I see the potential of the platform for filling your funnel for your side hustle. Yeah, we do have to recognize that it is a young platform. It's only a couple of years old with predominantly young users. So this is why some of this stuff is happening on the platform.
But TikTok is groundbreaking in the way that they do things. The way that it's all video, the way that it's all short-form content, and their algorithm, which I'm going to talk about in just a minute. But TikTok functions unlike any other social media platform. Facebook and Instagram are owned by the same people, so it makes sense that their algorithms are, are fairly similar. They function in the same way. Meaning, you know, you post a post, you have a thousand followers, the platform restricts the percentage of followers that see it down to like two to five, to maybe 10% of your followers.
If those people engage with the content, then the platform chooses to send it out to more people. Well, the TikTok algorithm doesn't work that way because this is a predominantly Gen Z platform, and Gen Z is leading the way. There is an altruistic feel to not only the content that's created.
Like I told you, I learn legitimate things from TikTok so not only that but also the way that the platform itself is run. The platform is based on fairness where it's not like the biggest creators, the people with the biggest audiences get the most like on other social media. Instead, with TikTok, small creators or brand new creators are emphasized just as much, if not more than the big accounts, which is something that's really cool.
So because of this altruistic nature and the altruistic nature of a lot of the content, if you find the "right side of TikTok", the social activist feel on the right side of TikTok for you, and the way that the platform really actually values newer or smaller creators, I think this could be a nice place for therapists to market. It could actually be a place where you feel really good about the content you're putting out and really good about the way that you're showing up. So keep an open mind, keep an open mind.
Alright. So I wanted to talk about the algorithm a little bit differently, or a little bit more, and like I said, the algorithm functions differently than other social media platforms. So the way that Facebook and Instagram work, even LinkedIn, it has a little bit different algorithm. It probably, in the next couple of years, if not within this year, will start changing because more people are starting to use it.
But with TikTok... I mean, with Facebook and with Instagram, you'll notice that on those platforms, they used to be chronological. It used to be just whatever was posted in the order. It was posted as what you saw, but as more people started to use the platforms and as more people started to be active on the platform, there was no way that the servers or whatever—I'm not a tech person—could handle that kind of output without organizing it without prioritizing it.
And so that's where algorithms came into play, and social media like Facebook and Instagram function the way I mentioned a little bit earlier. They send your content to the people who already follow you. And if that gets engagement, then it moves on, which is nice if you have a ton of followers because if you have a ton of followers (or loyal followers), if you have a ton of followers then the percentage of people who see it is just higher. Cause that's just math, right?
But if you have really loyal followers, then people maybe have favorited you where people have turned on notifications when you post. And so they are really engaged with you and so they're more, like, guaranteed to see it, but that's the only way that your post gets traction with those types of algorithms, with a... I don't know what it's actually called, but let's call it a follower-based algorithm for our purposes, with a follower-based algorithm. It's based on how many people are going to see it.
And if those people who follow you are loyal and engaged with your content now with TikTok, it works almost the opposite. TikTok doesn't put it out to your followers first. TikTok puts it out to the entire platform first and then shows that more if it gets engagement. So rather than restricting to just the people who follow you, TikTok says, oh, this looks like spiritual content for me, with my new program Rooted. That's what I'm using TikTok for. And so this looks like spiritual content. Let's find all the people who favor spiritual hashtags or who create spiritual content themselves, and then let's send it to a percentage of those people. And then if those people like it, we'll send it to more.
So they still do the restrict where they send it to a portion, and then if it gets action they send it to more. And then if it gets action there, they send it to more. However, it doesn't have to be people that are following. It's the whole platform. So you're getting in front of new people, essentially, every time you post. My videos have not gone viral. That's not true. I've gone viral once for my feet because I was getting a pedicure.
And that's the video that took off. It's had like 20,000 views, which for me as a brand new creator is "viral". Cause viral is relevant. All my other videos average around four to 500 views, which isn't a ton compared to, like, TikTok status. But if I was to have four to 500 people in my living room, that would be a lot of people.
But every time those four to 500 people are new people who don't follow me, and then I'm scooping up followers from there on TikTok. You set the setting, if you want to toggle it over to who you're following, you can only see videos of the people you're following. But most of us, and the default setting is, to leave it on the "for you" page.
Most of the time, the majority of the people who are seeing each of your videos are new people. That's the way to say that the majority of the people that see each of your videos are new people, which is mind-blowing. Again, like I said, this is groundbreaking. Instead of just being force-fed to the people that you're following and then hoping to get more followers because they engage with it, you're getting in front of new people each time and scooping up followers from that net every time and it's pretty cool.
So that's one of the reasons that I really like TikTok. It knows its audience so well that it doesn't like... it doesn't rely on you to know your audience, which we can look at that backward. Like that could be a good thing or a bad thing, because if you don't know your audience, it's not going to benefit your business.
But TikTok just kind of takes that upon itself and says: We know our audience so well. We'll put this where it needs to be, and I'm like, sure, I'll take it. Right? If you're going to help me out instead of hinder me like the algorithms on the other platforms, I'll take all the help I can get. In fact, it's kind of funny, like this has happened to me a couple of times where on my "for you" page, it'll be like... somebody will make a video and it says um, what's it called, POV, point of view.
So it's a type of video that you can make on TikTok and it says "point of view, you're a mom of two young kids who lives in the suburbs who something, something", and like nine out of the 10 things they list are accurate for me. But I don't follow that person. That person doesn't follow me. We haven't connected, but that's the algorithm at work is so fine-tuned into what I need that it will put videos like that in front of me. It's almost kind of creepy. I get it. But we can take advantage of that. If they're going to function that way, we can utilize that. Whereas the other platforms like Instagram and Facebook feel punitive, they feel like they penalize us.
They want us to pay them money to run ads on their platforms. That's their whole goal whereas TikTok really wants to share our content with the people who want it. There's integrity there, and there's honesty there that isn't on other platforms. So the other thing to think about with the tech talk that they do differently instead of just pushing it to your followers is TikTok pushes out the content geographically first.
So I noticed this. I started my TikTok in March and I was starting to get traction. I had my viral pedicure video while we were still in Georgia, Alabama, whatever. And then we went to Vegas for spring break. We ditched the kids with the grandparents in Arizona, and then we, Josh and I, went to Vegas. All of a sudden videos that I was used to getting, you know, five, 600 views were getting like 200 views it's because TikTok was confused. They were like, wait, we thought you were like a Southeastern region person, and now you're in the Southwest. We're confused.
And then when we got back from Vegas and I was posting back here either at home or across the bridge in Georgia those videos were really low for about a week, and then all of a sudden it was like, oh, okay, we see your home now. And then my videos started getting more views. So that's something to think about if you're going to be traveling that sometimes the views are going to be like lagging behind as TikTok, kind of figures out where you are, but that's how they limit their output. That's how they keep their servers happy or their whatever happy.
Instead of restricting you to the people who follow you, they just restrict you at first to the people in your region, which I think is actually kind of genius because one of the tricks to social media is posting at the right time posting at the time where your audience will be online.
So when I was doing mom coaching and I was trying to post at nap time or trying to post right after bed, certainly wasn't going to post at dinner time. It certainly wasn't going to post during, like, school drop-off times, right? Because the moms aren't using their phones then. Well, when you've got moms across all time zones, and you're trying to figure that out, it doesn't work, but when you know where you are and what the trends are like, okay, this is like daily commute time. People aren't or shouldn't be on their phones right now. This isn't the best time to post.
So you can really key into what you're doing and that can help you figure out the time of day that's best for you to post because it's going to go out to your time zone into your region first. So I think that's actually kind of genius.
Ultimately, what it comes down to on TikTok is good content verse game playing. Yes, there are still hashtags. Yes, there are still trends. If you're going to do the trends, you kind of have to do those "the right way" or get the right timing. You don't want to do a trend a week late because then people will be like, uh, you're late to the party. Right?
There are games that can be played on TikTok, but overall as a platform, it's the least gamey out there. It's the least one where you feel like you have to jump through the least hoops, as long as your content is good. And as long as it's speaking to the people that it needs to speak to, to talk, we'll figure the rest out. And I think that is really, really nice.
So, like I mentioned a little bit ago, I've been using TikTok for my new business Rooted. I haven't been doing therapist-facing stuff on there. I really just kind of settle into this podcast. This podcast is my place for you guys. But if you are like one of those witchy spiritual people, and you've been, like, kind of getting notes for me here, they're about Rooted and you want to follow along with TikTok, you totally can. It's @Marissa.Lawton over on TikTok, but that's where I talk about all the spirituality stuff, the divine feminine stuff, the natural rhythm stuff.
And I personally chose TikTok for a few different reasons. Some of the reasons I've already kind of been mentioning before. Just that it's really groundbreaking and it functions differently. And the game playing was a big concept for me, and like not having to jump through so many hoops. But I also liked that it was a platform that I wasn't known on. So I felt like I could make more mistakes. Right?
It's like, sometimes I feel like I have a "those who can't do, teach" kind of thing. And it's like, I teach you guys all about this even though social media has never been my thing. And I hired it out to Hailey, like, as soon as I could. As soon as I could afford it. And I've told that story before. I still felt like if I started on a platform where people knew me and expected, like, great content right out the bat, or expected me to maybe know what I was doing right away, I would have had a little more imposter syndrome and I would have been a little bit more reserved.
But on TikTok, it was a platform where no one knows me. So I did do some of the trends and I did do some of like, the dancing or the lip sinking and stuff, just to try it out. And I wasn't embarrassed A_ because I have a hundred followers, so whatever, and B) none of those people knew me or knew what I did professionally or anything like that. So it's kind of fun. I actually saw a TikTok the other day where it was like, this platform is not for you to follow me. If you know me in real life, this platform is for Anonymous things where I make an ass out of myself.
And that's kinda how I feel with my TikTok. So it allows me to play around. It allows me to make mistakes. It allows me to try out new messaging because Rooted is a new brand. There's things that are very related to what I talk about here, but there's things that are new, right.
So I was able to play around. Also, I needed to get better at short-form content. If you've been following the podcast for a while, you know some of my episodes are like an hour, even longer than an hour. And I was like, you know, I think I could do better at being more brief. And so the fact that I only have three minutes, even though I'm still struggling to get it down to the one minute or the 15 seconds. Three minutes is good. Three minutes I can do.
I can get across some solid information in three minutes, but I've always been better at longer-form content. I've always been better at just hunkering down, sitting down, getting cozy, and just talking or just sharing that short form is a skill and it's a skill I needed to get better at.
So it's also the best platform for audience growth right now. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about nurturing your audience, and this is different. This is audience growth. So the lead acquisition piece. So if you're not sure what I'm talking about there, go back to the episode where I'm saying, like, the email list is just the start, and I break down lead acquisition versus lead nurture, audience growth versus audience nurture.
But TikTok is definitely the best platform social media-wise that exists for audience growth right now because like I mentioned a minute ago, the algorithm is not punitive and the platform isn't punitive, just trying to get you to pay for ads. There are ads on TikTok, and I'm sure as more creators start to use them it will start to turn that way. Every platform does. But right now there's the sweet spot of TikTok where most people find it really fun.
It's pretty engaging. It's pretty popular, and it's not penalizing creators yet. Now, your follower count on TikTok does not mean anything if they aren't getting into your funnel. Right? So this is always going to be top of funnel. We're not looking to get TikTok famous. Like I said at the very beginning of the episode, we're looking to drive traffic to a program and to make money. We're looking to monetize this.
Also, one of the reasons that I chose TikTok is that it's very formulaic. So once you find out what it wants from you, then it starts matching the content to the people, you just do more of it. Right? So that's why I've kind of honed into a minute and a half, sometimes two and a half minute videos, because those seem to really resonate with my people.
They let them have enough contact with me to get to know me, but they also are long enough to teach like kind of one brief concept, and so that's kind of what I've settled into. That's kind of like my MO, and it is working really well. So it's pretty easy. I also really like the fact that it's not produced. I literally can be just getting home from school pickup with my kids. They go into the kitchen to grab a snack, which takes them about three or five minutes, or whatever. I can literally walk and record a TikTok within a minute and a half, two minutes while they're getting a snack.
I don't have to change my clothes. I don't have to change my hair. I don't have to put makeup on. I don't have to do these other things that I feel are more necessary on other platforms. I won't have to do them on any platforms, but they're not expected on TikTok like they are expected on other platforms. That's a good way to say it. So really that relaxed feel in the moment that, hey, I just hopped on to do this, this, and this, or this thought just came to me and I wanted to share it with you. Hope it's helpful. That is super relaxing for me. It gives me a place just to talk and I don't have to be uber put together for it. Also one last thing.
One final reason why I think TikTok is really neat is that the... because... I can't talk today. Also, one final reason that I think TikTok is really cool is that the content is so easy to repurpose. All you have to do is save the TikTok to your phone and you can upload it straight to Instagram reels, Instagram stories. You can put it on YouTube shorts, you can put it on the Pinterest idea pins.
You can put it on Facebook reels or Facebook stories. Every platform out there is trying—not even trying—is scrambling to keep up with TikTok because they've seen such incredible growth in just the last three years that all these platforms are like, oh crap. Like, we're in trouble here if we don't figure out how to maximize this short-form content. Instagram reels, you know, if you've been an Instagram user for a while or an Instagram marketer for a while, and you've known that it's been. Um, 18-24 months since they came out and that was their entire purpose, was to keep up with TikTok.
So because every platform is craving these videos, you can just put them on there. I've seen different things from different experts and some of them say you don't even have to take the TikTok logo off. You can just download it and then upload it right away. And I've seen that. I've definitely seen reels and Pinterest idea pins and other things with the logo still on there.
I started doing that and just putting it straight on my stories and straight on my Instagram reels. And I found two things: A) for my stories, people, like mothers and aunts were following me on TikTok and I was like, nope, I don't want you to see this on Facebook and think that means you can go follow my TikTok cause it doesn't, right. There's that anonymity piece, like this is for me only, or for me in this new audience, not you.
So that's one reason I started taking my watermarks off. And the other reason was when I posted them all as reels, they were getting literally like 20 views, and my reels usually get around a thousand views. So a little bit more than my TikToks do right now, but I'm a little more established on Instagram. So that makes sense. But then I took the watermark off and put it right on reels. Like I didn't edit it at all, except for taking the watermark off. And then my reels were back to performing nicely the way they're supposed to.
So that is one step you might consider doing. There's a bunch of apps that you can download for free that take the watermark off. I have the tab open in my safari and I just take the link from TikTok and put it in there, and then it generates a new video for me to save without the watermark. So it takes literally 20 seconds to do. That's the only thing you have to do. But to create one thing once, one-three minute video, one time, and then to be able to use that video across 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 other platforms or... not platforms, but six places is what we'll call it. It's super easy. And you're just expanding your reach that much further and it takes five seconds.
So those are all of the reasons that I really do enjoy TikTok. I started at the beginning of March and I'm up to 300 followers, which is the same number of followers I have on Instagram for Rooted, which I've been doing since like November of last year. So on Instagram, it took me six months to grow to 300, and on TikTok, it took me six weeks to grow to 300. So that's how much faster and how much higher the growth potential is on TikTok versus the other platforms. It's definitely faster.
However, I did expect to be at like 10,000 by now based on the way that people talk about TikTok. They say, oh, you can go viral overnight. And they do really like make it... they hype up that growth potential, which obviously I have seen a difference. It is growing faster, but it's not growing by thousands over. Which of course I know logically is not what was going to happen, but my ego was like, oh, well, I'm a good content creator. I'll totally grow that fast, and it hasn't happened.
But I often remind myself marketers—because I am one and I know the shady sides of the industry as well—marketers often just share their best testimonials and their best stories and they don't always share all of their students' results are all of the possibilities of their program.
So, you know, of course, they're going to share all the examples of how they help somebody grow to 10,000 by posting two videos. Right? But the other thing that I remind myself and that I want to remind you guys, like we've already been talking about for a while these last couple marketing episodes is that the number of followers is a vanity metric. The number of followers has no direct correlation to the amount of money that you make.
It's all about funneling those followers towards your offer and towards purchasing from you. So it's been really interesting to be at this newbie stage and go through all those newbie emotions again. You think you posted a great video and it only got like 12 views and you're so disappointed. Right? But also what's kind of neat that's happening is going through this in real-time with the Side Hustle students.
So they are building out their funnels this week. We're actually writing our email welcome sequences at the same time. And I told them, alright, I'm going to write mine the same week that you guys write yours. So we're all sharing them with each other and we're all getting feedback and stuff. And it's cool. It's cool to be at that newbie stage again for the Rooted business, and it's also cool to do it in real-time with my students.
So when I'm bummed, I'm like, dude, I get it. Like it's not just "I get it" from a five-years ago standpoint, the last time it was a newbie. It's like “I get it from two days ago” standpoint. So it's given me some new perspective or refreshed my perspective, I guess is a better way to say that, and it's just kind of been fun.
So that's what's really cool. Overall, my ruling, my recommendation on: should you market on TikTok? I think everybody should give it a solid 30-day try. Like, a solid 30-day run. If you can post two to three times a day, that's the best opportunity for growth, but even one post a day can be great. What I would love you to do over this 30 days is just be focusing on, well, first and foremost, getting your messaging down.
What am I actually trying to say about my program and why do I think that it's important for people to make these changes and talking about the problem, and the promise, and all of that stuff? I definitely think that over 30 days you can hone in your message. At first, I was talking about all kinds of random, like "spiritual stuff", until I was able to kind of reign it in and hone it in.
And I definitely think that took about a month until I knew oh. I made one TikTok and I was like, oh, that's it. Okay. That's one of the brand pillars. That's something I stand on. That's part of my platform, but it took me a while to get there. That's what I would spend those 30 days emphasizing, is just making videos about what your brand stands for— what it is you want to build a platform on or a message on.
And then secondary to that, I'd focus on, like, doing different hashtags and seeing how you can find people. So maybe hashtag mental health, hashtag healing journey, hashtag boundaries, hashtag healthy relationship. One of my students right now, we're exploring hashtag attachment style, hashtag anxious attachment on TikTok for her.
So that'd be the secondary thing I'd focus on for the 30 days first: Creating the content that is getting your messaging. Your who, your how, your why, your what of your brand. Your five W's and then trying different hashtag sets and seeing if you can get in front of the right people.
I think everybody should do this. I think it will hone your message. And I think the growth potential is there that you could be surprised you could be one of those people that grows to 10,000 and you know, six weeks, unlike me.
One of my masterminders, Lindsay, finished Side Hustle in the fall of 2021, and she's now in the Mastermind for 2022. She started posting right around the same time as me. She's in kind of the sex-positivity niche and sexual empowerment niche. And last I checked, she's already at 700 followers. I wonder if I check right now while I'm talking to you guys, just by posting... and I think that Lindsay told me that she actually only posts once a day. So just by posting once a day for the last six weeks, she is now... this is taking longer than I thought it was going to.
Bear with me. There she is, 779. So when I outlined this podcast two weeks ago, she was just under 700. So within the two weeks from that, she's added over 80 people in two weeks. So it's incredible what she's been able to do. Now, remember, followers are just the beginning, and they have to go through the funnel, and nurturing them towards your offer is the most important. Turning followers into buyers. We're not interested in just accumulating people, we're interested in buyers.
So if you want to learn not only how to market, but how to make sure that those followers are turning into buyers. You might be interested in the Slow and Steady bundle. The slow and steady bundle combines the self-study version of Space Holder with a self-study version of Side Hustle Support Group.
We ran this as a beta flash sale last year, and it worked out so well that I'm bringing it back again for this summer. You get access to both of my programs to go through on your own time and to follow along step-by-step to work towards results. You also of course get the monthly coaching from me. That's included in Space Holder. It just gets you access to the entire Side Hustle curriculum early.
So if you're somebody who knows, oh, I want to do Side Hustle, but I don't want to wait until the fall for registration to open. You can go ahead and grab the Side Hustle self-study that's inside the slow and steady bundle, and you can start working through the curriculum.
It might just be all that you need. You might be able to just do everything with the curriculum and go at your own pace. If you do decide to join us in the big program in the fall, everything you paid for, the Slow and Steady bundle, comes right off the top. So you get to kind of take that amount right off the top, and you only owe me for the remainder of the live version. So it's a win-win.
You can check out this Slow and Steady bundle over at marissalawton.com/slowandsteady—all one word. And you can join us for the monthly coaching that starts along with that program. Alright, I will be back next week and until then guys, keep on rising.
