TikTok Tips for Small Businesses

It's time for episode number 288 with my friend, Brittany Tavinsky. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and I can't wait to chat. Sometimes social media can feel so overwhelming, right? You just feel like you got the hang of Facebook groups and then Instagram and you've got your email list and your text list and you've built a mobile app and you're like, my gosh, how many different ways can I communicate with my customers? And just then a new platform comes along and either you're in one of two camps, you're excited to try this brand new platform, or you're feeling like, oh, crap, I've got yet another thing to keep up with. Well, today we want to uncover some truths about the platform TikTok, because one thing's for sure, 2020 will always be remembered for. Yes, the very first, stay at home orders and quarantine. But second, what did you do during quarantine? And that was you made random crazy TikToks with your grandma. So how has TikTok evolved throughout 2020? Well, today I'm sitting down with Brittany Tavinsky, who is a boutique owner and a social media consultant, and we're going to talk about what TikTok really means and how to it for your business today. Because as 2020 evolved, really, TikTok did take on a life of its own and has supported many, many small businesses and helped them to grow their audience. And if you've been a part of the hub for any period of time, you've probably heard me say this. It's that money follows eyeballs. It's not about having yet another platform where we're constantly pushing product and asking for sales, but instead it's about building your brand. It's about building relationships with customers. It's about reaching eyeballs who therefore are going to follow you and hopefully buy. So I hope today's conversation answers some of your TikTok questions, but as always, make sure you jump inside of the hub. Brittany is inside of the hub and can answer some of your TikTok questions. And there's tons more resources inside as well. But I think this is an app that we are just getting started with. Get ready to learn more about TikTok with my friend Brittany Tavinsky.

All right, calling all of you social media buffs, today is your day. I can't wait to talk about TikTok because I know that you have a thousand questions swirling around in your head right now. So the best person to join me for this conversation is Brittany Tavinsky and she is the owner of 80 Square Foot Boutique, a member of the Hub who has absolutely exploded on TikTok and I cannot wait to talk all about it. Brittany, how's it going?

It is going so good, all things considered. Oh, goodness. Yeah.

Quarantine for you looks a little different than most and that is because your business is a little bit different than most. Talk to me about your living situation at the moment.

Yeah, so my husband and I about a year ago decided to live in an RV full time and travel the United States. So our living arrangements as far as traveling every two to three weeks we pick up and move to a different city in the United States. So currently, just because of everything that's going on, we're going to be staying put for a little bit. But typically we're out exploring a new city every two weeks.

I think that is the coolest thing. So how many cities and states have you been to so far?

Oh, wow. I do not know off the top of my head, but a good bit. We've. What we do typically is we live in a state and then jump around a major cities. So one of our first main like stays was Colorado. We were at Denver, Colorado Springs. Then we went to California for a good bit. We were in Vegas, Arizona, saw the Grand Canyon multiple times, which was really cool. Then most recently we were in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And yeah, now we're back in Pennsylvania, which is my home state. Yes. So it's kind of funny. We've been to probably 40 states together total, but we only count the ones that we spend like at least two nights at. So we've done. We've driven across the country probably, I don't even know now, five times. So we have gone back and forth quite a bit.

All right, so I'm sure everyone's wondering, what are the logistics? How do you run a boutique out of a trailer? Talk to me about that. Is your inventory in the trailer? How do you ship?

Yes.

How did all of this logistically work out for you?

So excellent question because we had to figure that out. Pretty hardcore. So the name of our boutique is 80 square feet boutique and that is because we started our boutique Literally out of an 8 by 10 room. So literally out of 80 square feet in the back of our RV. So we renovated the RV so the boutique space looks cute and boutique and the whole house is like really adorable, but with a lot of Tetris like skills. So when we started our boutique, it was a little challenging to find just the right balance for like how inventory management was a little tricky for sure. So like how quick products come in. We liked to stock up on product at least a month out because if there was a delay in shipping or anything like that, it just was a lot easier to just kind of bulk things together versus every week getting new product in. So if you're stationary, you can have packages kind of just rolling in whenever. For us, because of our moving schedule, we had to be a lot more strategic and in our ordering. And then what we did is we had stackable bins, a really great bin system that my husband helped organize. And that worked really, really well for us until about three months ago when we legitimately just completely ran out of space. So a lot of people who are listening, you know, basically if you get more product in, you're looking to scale your business, you need to have products to have the amount of numbers that you're looking to make. So what was going on is we just were running out of space and we couldn't get enough new product in. So recently we actually switched to a drop ship model, which is so beautiful for us in our situation because we don't have to have as much inventory on hand and then someone else is doing shipping on our behalf. So it's a lot cleaner for us.

That's perfect. Did you find that you just needed to start looking for wholesalers that would drop ship or did you outsource it to like a third party altogether where you were shipping all of your inventory to that company and then they were taking over all the shipping for you?

Yeah, great question. So we looked into literally every, every possibility. We were originally going to go that route, but it's if you pay for it as a, through like a warehouse or that kind of model that gets rather pricey really quick. So we were going to outsource it independently. Long story short, we found a like third party dropshipper. So they upfront the wholesale cost. And the great part of it is, is that it's a boutique specific dropshipper. So all the brands we were already purchasing using, they were also purchasing and using. So it was a really great fit, really great timing fit. They launched. I think it was like Three months ago. And that was the same time we were looking for a solution to our problem. So it's just a really great timing and a really great fit.

That's awesome. How did you decide that you were going to get into a boutique in the first place?

Great question. So for the past, for like three years. For the past three years or so, I was a part of a direct sales clothing company and we navigated from that. That kind of fizzled out for us personally and it didn't really work with the shipping model. So we decided to open up our own boutique. And a huge part of it was one the community. We look at our customers not just as customers, but they're now our friends. We have women that we've never met. They're like, you're like my children I never had, or you're like my third set of grandkids. It's really cool. Or you're like the third sister. So it's really awesome to have that kind of community. And we really wanted to keep on providing amazing products for them and we decided to open up our own boutique.

That's perfect. Perfect way to transition. I think there's been a lot of boutiques that have been in that situation where they previously were with, you know, some kind of direct sales company and they decided now to move to owning their own business, which obviously provides all kinds of freedoms and flexibilities and to create the brand that you want it to be going forward.

For sure. I absolutely love it.

Perfect. So along the way you, you know, I'm sure did all the typical marketing, Facebook, Instagram, all the channels.

Right.

But somehow along the way you landed on TikTok. Talk to me about how you first got to playing with TikTok and how.

You knew that was going to be.

Such a good fit for you.

Yeah, for sure. So couple things I heard about from a teenager, a very sassy 16 year old, and she was going on and on about just showing me examples and oh, there's this new thing called TikTok and I've heard of it before and I kind of thought of it just like a lot of the listeners today are, okay, it's up and coming, but it's for super young audience or it's just lip syncing or just dancing. When I started signing up and like diving more deep into it, I was like, okay, this is totally something I could get involved with. I saw the super early potential of it and just the growth and the possibilities that can happen. For me personally, I, I love Instagram stories. And I love going live and, like the video content aspect of things. So that was a really great fit for my personality. I don't like learning new dances, but I'm like, hey, I got a lot of other things that we can share with our potential viewers and content that we can provide for them. So I started diving in about three months ago, though, is when I got really serious about it as far as using it for my business and using it as a marketing tool versus a just a consumer on the platform. So I feel a lot of people go on and they're like, okay, what is this? They're curious. And they get, I call it sucked into the TikTok rabbit hole. Do you have a TikTok by any chance yet?

I do.

Okay.

We have a boutique. Yeah, we have a boutique at one. And I have a personal one.

Okay.

Honestly, I haven't even. I haven't used my personal one other than to, like, watch TikTok.

Yes.

Yep. But we have some on the hubs TikTok that our team's been making.

Okay, wonderful. So then you might be familiar with, I call it the TikTok Rabbit hole, where you're, like, in it for, like, five minutes, then all of a sudden you're like, okay, what happened to 40 minutes of my day? I've been in the TikTok rabbit hole? So I went. I went from consuming the content to then producing my own content and trying to kind of experiment with it. Trial and error of what worked well for boutiques, specifically, and small businesses. So when I did that, that was about three months ago, like I said, I started with 98 followers. And then today, if you go ahead and check us out, it's our handle is that millennial couple. We're now at 80,000 followers, which has been insane. Yeah.

So awesome. So first thing, I'm going to ask this question because I know anyone who's not familiar with TikTok who doesn't have an account or know what it's all about. Also, my daughter has an account and legit. Today at lunch, she came to me and she was like, mom, this is what I'm making for lunch today. And I'm like, where'd you put that recipe? She's like, I got it on TikTok. But she follows all of these, like, food accounts on TikTok. Yes.

So good.

So. So if you're not familiar with it, you're probably wondering, do I have to lip sync and dance in order to be on TikTok?

Yeah, absolutely not.

And I'm living Proof.

Because if you had to take the time to learn all the dances, I mean, I'm definitely girl, if you're good at dancing, like, dance your heart out. If that's your thing, please do your thing. But for me, taking the time to learn all the dances is not necessarily my thing. So I actually grew to from the 98 to 60,000 followers without doing any dancing at all. And then I've learned probably two dances so far, and they've been insanely simple. And I just kind of have been using them to promote my boutique in a, like, more fun way. So definitely not a place that you just have to lip sync or dance. There is the cooking, like your daughter mentioned. So there's cooking, there are rants, There are just funny things. There is a video. This is one of my favorite examples. There are two dogs. This woman decided to quickly take a video of her dog at a dog park and they're wrestling in the mud. And that got. It's probably more than this at this point. 4 million views. So literally, like, it can be pretty much anything, honestly.

So what would be your advice for someone? Like, where do you even start if you're brand new?

Great question. So I really believe one. Just get your handle on TikTok. So my biggest thing, if you're listening today, you don't have a TikTok account. You're not sure how you feel about it. Just go ahead and save your handle because at this point today, when you're listening to it, this podcast, there will be the least amount of people signed up because it's very popular app and every single day more and more people are signing up. So sign up. The next step would be to just do your research. When you're going through the rabbit hole, start favoriting things that really stick out to you or that you enjoy looking at seeing in your feed. Because if those are the type of things that you're enjoying and content you love, you can start thinking for your business. Okay, how can I take this and make it more me more on brand? So I would start there and then just. I'm all about just doing the thing. So I tell a lot of the women that I work with that you never know what's on the other side of posting that one video. So I know it can be a little scary and it's a little. You might be unsure, but the best way to get used to it is just by practicing posting and just doing the thing.

I think it's kind of a mindset shift, isn't it? Of we're also used to this Instagram filtered world. Like first was Facebook. Well, really first was MySpace and then Facebook and then Instagram came along and everything was perfect. And then came along stories and Snapchat and people started to like, lift this veil and become so much more authentic. I feel like TikTok is that on steroids. Like, it's that on the next level of just you being totally raw in who you are and not being scared to show up goofy or silly. And it may not be at all related to the clothes that you sell, some of your videos, but it's more about the brand.

Would you agree? Yeah, totally. So if you go to Instagram, even my Instagram or Instagrams in general, typically, they're a little bit more polished. There's a very. I focus very on my hashtags, what I'm writing, consistent emojis, my filters that I'm using, all the things right. On TikTok, I think people are, honestly, it's a little. They're kind of sick of like, they want to connect with other real people. And TikTok is the place for if you think you're a little bit. I don't know, people are like, if I'm a weirdo, can I be on TikTok? And I'm like, oh, girlfriend, like, TikTok was made for weirdos. Like, if you're perfect, we don't want you in the best loving way possible. But yeah, exactly. It's for being authentic, showing up as yourself. And on this platform, I like posting behind the scenes, how to's not direct salesy things, so to speak. Like the swipe up shop. Now it's 20% off, you know, on Instagram stories or. Oh, free shipping today only. No, no, no, no, no. We're gonna, we're gonna teach, we're gonna be teachers, educators. We're gonna show behind the scenes and we want people to fall in love with us, our personality, our brand. Like you said, go on there. Looking to become BFFs with your future client. Like, what would she love? Post that. Do that thing. And you don't need makeup. I mean, this is actually kind of funny looking back. There's nothing I can do to change it, and it is what it is. But one of my first viral videos was a mere rant with a messy bun. No makeup, in my pajamas, Ashley. A pajama set from my parents for Christmas. Like pajamas. What? Have I done that on Instagram? Absolutely.