Why TIKTOK SUCKS For ARTISTS...

A lot of people are hailing TikTok as, like, the shortcut to becoming well known. It's like everybody's ticket to virality and millions of followers, millions of fans, all these things. I actually want to stand against that today, and I want to do it with this guy right here. His name's Tist. Actually, no, he does know a little bit about TikTok because he made one yesterday.

But if you're trying to use platforms like this and the idea of virality to really build a community, to be seen as an artist, I think that there could be some nuanced things that are missing. With a platform like TikTok, what ends up happening is you lead somebody into something that all of a sudden gets you famous for the thing that you didn't really want to get famous for.

So we're gonna talk about that and how to prevent that in this video. Tist, I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to let you go.

If you don't know me. My name is Lennon, and I'm here to help creative artists to stand out and make money doing meaningful work. I'm getting a can of my. Okay, your toy kennel, I think, is already in there, babe. This is it. This is what it's like to be in a pandemic. That's my wife.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So there's a couple things that I want you to think about. I'm gonna actually argue that getting big numbers on TikTok is a lot easier than the things that need to be in place for that virality to actually make a difference what you're doing. And I'm even dealing with this right now. So to give you some context, like, I'm trying to grow my Instagram account. I've been doing a lot more full time hours with personal clients and with video creators, and so I have a lot less time to, like, just make stuff. But I've been working on Instagram and working on it. I've been seeing that I'll have posts that will do really well, you know, like reach 20,000 accounts, and they'll maybe get a couple thousand likes. And I only have maybe 1200 followers right now. But then what ends up happening is because my stuff, when they come back to it, doesn't blatantly present what it should present. People aren't necessarily following me as quickly as I could be getting them to follow. Right. And so I want to kind of just warn you of this that if you don't know where you're leading somebody to, you may Be spinning your wheels in the wrong direction. So, so as you're putting together your TikTok stuff, I want you to think, am I making the right kind of content for the right person? Am I not just trying to ride a trend of a dance thing or whatever just to ride a trend? If you want to do that just to try and go viral, I think that's totally fine. But the problem here is that if you feel like that's the thing that's going to get somebody back to the thing that you want to be known for, you probably have some issues there because the friction is high to get them to go from passive scrolling mode to oh my gosh, I. I'm now here to discover new art and to get into this place and get into this mindset of this beauty and this work. Right? So if you can't lead them back to something with the type of content that is intended for your audience, then you're going to have a bigger issue on your hands. At the end of the day, it's a lot better to get 500 really, really powerful good views from the right people than to get 50,000 from people that are just passively scrolling through with no intent of getting into the thing that you want them to get into. Okay. The other thing that I want you to remember is success is not defined by how many followers you have on Instagram or how many subscribers you have on YouTube. And even more and more, if you're just looking for brand deals, even if you're an artist, you're like, I want to do more brand deals. Brands are working more and more with micro influencers every single day. So you don't need that many followers to be able to get brands to be interested. You need the right followers that are really engaged with what you're trying to do. And if the followers that you have right now aren't engaged, then I'm going to say that you don't have the right foundation set for them yet. And that's okay. We talk a lot about how to set that foundation in this channel because what we know, social media does not pay your bills. People pay your bills. So you want to make sure that you're hitting and meeting and connecting with the right people. You know, a lot of educators here are talking about, like, I'm going to help you get your thousand true fans in 30 days or whatever. You. It doesn't happen that way. Connection doesn't happen over 30 days, especially with a thousand people. And any good business person is going to tell you that like, you have to be ready to play the long game to really make this stuff happen. Okay, stop focusing on the low hanging fruit when you don't have a basket to put the apples in. You know what I mean? Like, if you can't pick that low hanging fruit and put them somewhere where you know you can collect and keep them and nurture that whole thing, then it is not worth focusing on. So is this the best time that you could be spending right now? Is trying to make a viral video on TikTok as important as making sure that you understand your values, that you understand your belief systems, that you understand what the problem is that you're solving for your potential fan or potential client? Like, if you can't express that, then you're gonna have problems, especially when those people that you want to come to your stuff see that. So that's what I want you to walk away from with this video. What is your intent when you're making your TikTok? If it's just to get big views and not to get somebody somewhere, then you need to rethink the structure. If you feel like your foundation isn't laid yet on your other platforms, on your website, on your Instagram or wherever, or even on your TikTok, think about that. Think about how you're communicating who you. How you're valuable to somebody, right? The problem that you solve for a viewer, and I'm going to tell you, like, your art should actually solve a problem for somebody. It may be a feeling or an emotion, or it may be like actual practical problems like saving somebody money or time, right? But it should solve a problem for somebody. But if you're not communicating those things well on the back end, then your TikTok is going to be worthless. And I think that's why TikTok kind of sucks for artists right now, is because most artists just aren't thinking about what's the actual goal here. And we're going to be talking about this in the form of a lot of platforms right now and how people are teaching it, especially to artists that are trying to grow a business and a fan base in a really authentic way, which I know is what you're trying to do. Okay, so we'll see you guys in the next video.