Everyone says that TikTok is the new video platform to be on, but should you invest your time in TikTok no matter what? In this episode, I'll share my experiences with and thoughts on you've guessed it TikTok. Welcome to the content creator kickstart. My name is Rued Riis, I'm a video creator. I love video.
So when TikTok came along a few years ago, of course, I was kind of interested in this new platform. It was a brand new take on video platforms. Actually, it's kind of different than what we've seen so far and very different from, from the platform I use the most. YouTube has been used to be long form content only.
Now they also have YouTube shorts, but a new thing about TikTok was the very fast pace, the very short formats, and also the graph, how the algorithm works will come back to that later. I heard a podcast. It was called a16z it's made by some investors over in Silicon valley, California. And here, there was an expert who talked about the, the, this interest graph.
The algorithm around TikTok is different than the social graph that many other social media are based on. So the interest graft means that. The algorithm will find content that you find interesting. That's nothing new, but they kind of ignore your friends. They, they don't really care about your social circles.
Like if you're friends with a lot of people on Facebook and they like something, you'll probably be presented with that same thing, because they anticipate that you like the same things as your friends, like the interest graph is more individualistic focused on your interests and not so much on the, the interests of your.
Gary Vaynerchuck or Gary Vee a very known businessman and, you know, speaker motivator. He's a really cool online person. And he says that now's the are missing the open window of TikTok while it's still new and fresh, you should create content for TikTok many times a day and take advantage of this open window of opportunity where you can get your foot in the door and create a, a brand around yourself on.
So, of course I decided to give it a fair shot. What I did was that I created about 40 videos on TikTok. Tried to see if I could learn something from experimenting with the platform. I created videos in both languages. First I created English videos and then I created Danish ones in my own native language.
And I'll say that I learned three main lessons. My three, three main takeaways were S follows. The first thing was that it's kind of hard to break out of. if you create your TikTok account in Denmark, where I created my TikTok account, the first many, many videos will be presented to Danes people in Denmark.
So I'm producing English content and it was really hard for me to get English viewership on that content. So I would get all these comments from danes saying, Hey, you're Danish. I can hear that Danish accent when you speak English. And that's, that's nice, but that's not really the point of the content.
The content is that it should, you know, go, go out and, and find the. the English speaking people out in the world because my niche is relatively small. Explain the videos. I talk a lot about Vyond animation and for that to work as a business, for me, it has to be global audience because yeah, it is a relatively small niche, so it doesn't work if it's only for dates.
The second thing I learned was that animation doesn't really work. I uploaded Short animation videos to TikTok in the vertical formats, everything was custom made for the platform and they didn't really perform one video. Did it was about what is, what does it mean to be a boomer? Okay. Boomer.
That kind of got a few thousand views, but the others didn't really work. I think it's much more about humans. That's authentic face that you see it's about fun entertainment, not so much about explain. The third thing that I learned is that I don't really think it was worth the time I invested in creating these custom forward format.
Because it needs to be for, it needs to be custom for TikTok. You can't just take a YouTube video and throw it on there. It needs to be super snappy, high paced, fun. You need to overlay with text at some uptempo background music, you know, play along with the rules of TikTok and and co contextualize your content to that specific platform, which is TikTok and it's different from, from other platforms.
So I spend a lot of time and I don't really believe that. Got any business value out of it. And you know, for the sake of the experiments, I also didn't get a lot of attention or traction out of what I, what I invested. So what happens, I decided to not be too hard on TikTok. If Gary V was here, he would probably say that I would just let the opportunity pass me by.
And I'm kind of fine with. So what happens next? I return to the core. My core is YouTube and I love the platform. I know it's already becoming a little old school to be a YouTuber because you wanna be a content creator and always follow the latest platforms. Be everywhere all the time. But My success has come from my well humble, early success has come from YouTube, everyone that I teach all students, all members of my classes and courses come from YouTube.
And it works because it is search based. I'm a, I have a niche focus and people Google. Animation, explain a video, whiteboard animation, Vyond tutorial, all these curious, and they find me it's search based. And that works well for me. I don't need that super big top funnel of attention, you know, going really, really broad and get a lot of attention, a lot of eyeballs that doesn't really, it doesn't really work like that for me.
People have to have a very specific problem. They. In some company or their freelancers, they are looking into Vyond, for example, they're looking for a few tips and tricks or they wanna learn the basics and that's what they search for. And then eventually they find me and down the rabbit hole, they go until they buy something from me.
Right. That's the business model. I was just gotta say that I'm a solar printer. I don't have any employees. I don't have any help. I only have my two hands and seven, eight hours each day. So I only have so much time. And even though I do repurpose content for for social media, when I create a, a YouTube.
A video. I often create an article around it, on my block, and then I write something on LinkedIn and share it on Facebook and repurpose it in different ways. But I don't want to create custom content for each platform. I want to use the core piece of content I create specifically for YouTube. And then I repurpose that I don't create custom variations or create new content for, for example, TikTok.
I simply don't have the time. Yeah, so. I believe there will always be room for, for deep content. Like the longer form content I publish on YouTube. And if you don't like this fast paced short form stuff, my recommendation is to, to just leave it be. You don't have to jump on every new shiny trend that comes along.
TikTok is cool. It's fun. I really, really enjoy TikTok as a consumer, but as a creator. I've decided it's not for me now. I might be wrong or whatever you might say in the future. Looking back, I should have jumped on that train as well. But I just think that you also just have to be really, really picky with how you spend your time, how you invest your time, especially if you are only yourself.
I understand if you have a whole team of creators, people who can take your content and edit it and create new kinds of like a faster pace, create a, a TikTok kind of version of your YouTube videos. For example, that would make sense. But we'll see. Maybe I'll do that in the future. But my, my main take here, my hot take on TikTok is that you don't need to, to jump on the platforms you don't enjoy creating for.
I think you have to be super picky about what you invest in and what you focus on. And you'll be more than fine if you just win on one major platform like YouTube, for example. So. I know I've been kind of inactive the last couple of weeks on YouTube, but I will get back at it. It will be my core focus.
So thanks for listening along. I really, really enjoyed the time we spent together, even though I was the primary person to talk, I hope that we can make this two-way conversation one day, but we'll see. Maybe we'll find a new social platform that works like that. Until next time, I wish you a great day and a lot of learning, and I hope that you will strive to create video content.
So you two can unlock the power of video. See you.
