Tiktok releases new SEO feature, US House Bans TikTok, and more

TikTok just released a new SEO feature that you guys should check out. Eric, how do you go and create your social media content?

Honestly, I take these podcasts and we just chop them up like crazy now. It works like crazy though.

All right, so a lot of people do that or they read or they use programs like Tweet Hunter and they see what's popular on X and it gives them regurgitated ideas. But TikTok released a new feature where you can go on TikTok And in their search bar, you know, like where the magnifying glass is, type in creator search insights, insights with an S, that's 3 words, creator search insights. I'll repeat it once more, creator search insights. And then you'll see a little view button, a little banner with the view button, click on that. And it'll show you all the popular keywords, like in a table format, like most SEO tools, of what's popular related to what you like in your interests, but it also shows you what's trending. But what's really cool is you can click on it and then you can end up seeing the behavior over time for that keyword or phrase. And then if you have your own ideas, you're like, man, I don't really like any of these ideas. I want some more new fresh concepts. You can type in any keyword into TikTok and it'll give you other keyword suggestions and show you the popularity of those keywords.

So it tells you like the volume too?

Yeah, but here's what's really cool. So you're getting their version of volume, which is a little bit different than what we're used to as SEOs, but underneath it, it starts showing you popular videos too. So then you have ideas on the type of content that's worked really well for these keywords and phrases.

Interesting. Have you used it for anything?

We started using it for ideation, yes. We haven't created the video versions of the topics, but we started using it for ideation.

That's interesting. Yeah, the way I ideate now is I just, come up with whatever ideas and then I just put it in my notes and then I just pick whatever resonates with me. So it's like, you go through different phases too. It's like sometimes in the past I used to use Tweet Hunter, I used to do keyword research and I used to use TubeBuddy, all these things, right? Now I'm just like, I'm comfortable with what we have and it works out. So there's no right or wrong way to do it, but I think it's interesting. By the way, Neil and I have an agency owners group called the Agency Owners Association. All you have to do, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. Once again, it's marketingschool.io/agency to learn more. And now back to the show. Speaking of TikTok, I mean, just yesterday the US House banned TikTok. So, you know, or they voted to ban it, I should say. Like, it's gonna go up to Supreme Court. We'll see what happens there. But, um, I think it's interesting that because if it actually gets banned, it's setting a pretty bad precedent for all the other social platforms because that means you can, in effect, you can effectively just remove them from the App Store.

Yeah. And did you read the specifics on it? They're not necessarily trying to I could be wrong, but I was watching CNBC and The Verge editor-in-chief broke down what the ban means and he was getting technical. He was talking about, and I'm paraphrasing here, it means like Apple won't be able to list them and others won't. So pretty much indirectly, you're—

You're dead.

Killing it off. Yes. You're killing all the providers that they're using for their app to work and saying you're no longer allowed to be here, which is going to end up killing it. But do you really honestly think ByteDance, which is worth billions of dollars, is going to let TikTok go and just vanish to zero?

No. But I will say that they have spent over $1 billion already trying to comply. And still, the US government's going after them. But by the way, just for everyone, we're not legal, we're not law experts, but just because the House passes it doesn't mean it's done. It still has to go through the Senate. Then it has to reach Joe Biden's desk. And then I'm sure it could go all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Biden will ban it. I think he publicly stated that.

Yeah, he said he would sign it.

Yeah. But look, I don't see TikTok being banned or ever disappearing. The government may pass whatever. I don't see ByteDance being like, oh cool, we'll just lose this $20, $30, $50 billion asset. They're going to go take the cash from someone. They're not going to let it go to zero.

There's too much money invested in it too from like all around the world, not just China, right? It's like you have a lot of US investors. I think Sequoia has money in it too.

Do they?

Yeah, I think so. It's one of the big firms.

Or Sequoia's Chinese fund.

I don't know, like, but I just know that there's a lot of money tied to it. And then the whole thing is this, like, oh, it's like, oh, TikTok's spying on you or whatever. Yeah, they're spying on you, but so is Facebook. So is like, so are all these other platforms.

So are the credit card companies and stuff like that.

Yeah, they're all spying. Like, like everything you use, like you're probably getting spied on.

So dude, do you remember that Target email and the person found out they were pregnant from Target, or the parents found out they were pregnant from Target?

Oh.

Because back in the day, because it like heard them and then started— No, not heard, just based on different things or cycles. Where is that? Dude, I should just Google.

Tell the story. It'll be a good clip. Dude, these story clips work out so well.

Target found out— oh, bingo, dude. How Target found out a girl was pregnant before her father did. That's the article. Forbes blocked it, man. These paywalls.

So you know how to remove the paywall? Go to removepaywall.com, take, copy, cut and paste, and then put the removepaywall.com and then slash the URL and then you'll get past it. That's a good clip, by the way, everyone.

How Target exposed a girl's pregnancy. Let's see, Target broke down through a new level of customer tracking with the help of statistical genius Andrew Pole, according to New York Times. Pole identified 25 products that were purchased together to indicate if a woman is likely pregnant. The value of this information was that Target could send coupons to the pregnant woman at An expensive and habit-forming period of her life. Plugging into Target's customer tracking technology, Pulse Formula was a beast. Once it even exposed a teenage girl's pregnancy. And I'm assuming that's how her father figured out. My daughter got this in the mail, he said. She still is in high school and you're sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant? Right? So their system, was able to predict based on buyer patterns if someone is pregnant and they start sending more.

So everyone's getting spied on. It's like this whole narrative, like, you know, us versus China or whatever. Like, we're not being political here. I just, I just think this isn't gonna work. And then I think if it does, if it does miraculously pass, then that hurts all the social companies. So, well, it helps the social companies because it helps them, but that also sets the precedent where it's like, oh, you can actually like get rid of things now. And then Also, remember the Section 230 or whatever? That's called into question now too. Again, we're not going to go into details here.

I don't know what Section 230 is.

I think Section 230 is where you can post whatever you want on the platforms and Facebook or Google or whatever, they're not responsible for the content that's being posted there because they're not the ones posting it.

Got it.

You know what I mean? Yeah.

So anyway, no, but if you go to China, they have their own social networks. Oh yeah, they have their own search engine.

TikTok's banned in China. They have a Douyin or something like that. Douyin, something.

But it's the same company.

It's the same thing, but it's a much more censored version of TikTok.

Yeah, but it's the same company too, no?

It's the same company.

Yeah, but what I'm getting at is there is no Facebook in China, from my understanding, last I checked. You can't use Gmail there. Yeah, they have their own tools. We're doing the same thing that they're doing.

Well, yeah, it's an eye for an eye.

Yes, right.

Like, so in that respect, like, I understand why we're retaliating a little bit, but Yeah.

And like I said, I, if I had to bet on it, I'm not a betting man, but I would bet that TikTok doesn't go away. Whatever they end up voting, someone will come and buy it out.

And, you know, they have to divest it if that, you know, they'll have to divest it. Yeah.

But remember when Trump was in office, they talked about divesting it. Oracle stepped up. I forgot who else stepped up. It was Walmart. I know Oracle.

Oracle for sure. I don't know the other ones.

Yeah. And You know, there was a potential deal that would have happened. I think they'll go down the same thing. Again, if I was ByteDance, the company, I'm not going to lose an asset that's worth $20, $30, $50, whatever billions of dollars it is.

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So let's talk about— I'm actually loading up the sheet right now. Um, speaking of social media, dude, what do you think the ideal posting frequency is for each social network? I don't know. Take a guess. You want to go one by one?

Here, okay, let's start with— I think I feel like, okay, if I had to average it across the board, maybe it's like 2 or 3.

2 or 3. You're actually really close. I have actually the stats. You know what's so funny? We use this sheet. I do not know how to click the links in the sheet, so I have to scroll and actually find it.

Maybe we should switch it to a spreadsheet.

That's what we'll do. It's not a spreadsheet?

I don't know. No, this is a Google Doc.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So here is the ideal— this is content length. We're talking about posting frequency. Here you go. Okay, X, take a guess. Let's do each one.

4 or 5.

3+ times a day. So 4 or 5 is actually in there. And you already know this, X's algorithm doesn't really punish you if you keep posting crap content. Videos though don't do as well as text from everything that we've seen and tested. Although X had made a statement, I don't know when it was, a few weeks, a month ago that they said they were a video-first platform.

Well, you know what it is? Okay, so I have seen videos perform well, but you know why? It's because the text preceding the video does well. And it's like, it's really about the dwell time on that post. And Elon said this, right? It's like, it doesn't matter if you like, you post a link to somewhere else as much as like, you keep them on the post long, and then they'll give you more reach.

Okay, Instagram, take a guess for post or Reels. Either one.

Now it's more because of Reels. So I have to assume it's like 2 to 3.

1 to 2 times a day. Okay. Stories?

3 to 4, 5 to 6.

Close, 2 to 4. Yeah. Um, the, the problem with Instagram is if you keep posting too often, it just doesn't do well unless it's all amazing hits. If you have all amazing hits, actually, for all these hours—

You have no idea right now, my Instagram in the last 28 days, 2.7 million views.

It was the rich— it's a girl video.

No, it's, it's gone past that now. It was like Vivian was carrying it for a while, but it's gone past that.

No, no, I was on your profile. It's been showing me some of the girl videos.

No, it's the girl one, but I was looking at it, but even the Nathan Barry one has like 900,000 Oh, cool.

What's the ConvertKit?

Yeah, ConvertKit.

And then LinkedIn?

1.

Yes, spot on. LinkedIn, if you post 2 times a day right after each other, it just screws up the reach of the first one. So if you're going to post 2 on the same day, spread them out by at least 7 hours. TikTok?

2 to 3.

Close, 1 to 3, same thing. YouTube?

1 max.

One short, one long max. Yeah, you got spot on. If you're going to do 2 in the same day, one short, one long recommendation spread out is by at least 5 hours. Facebook, this one's a doozy.

Facebook, I don't even have a frame of reference here. 4 times.

I— we couldn't find a pattern. We need to look at more data. Yeah, but we couldn't find a pattern with the amount of posts that we ended up looking at. We analyzed 332,490 And originally we analyzed 300,000. We had to increase the number because we couldn't find a pattern on Facebook.

Yeah.

And then we still didn't find a pattern. I bet you if we looked at 10 million pieces of content on Facebook, we would find a pattern. But, you know, we didn't get that far.

Related to this actually is— so this, this, this guy I used to hang out with on Clubhouse, Daniel Priestley, got out such a waste of time on Clubhouse. But so, so You know, Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett, that podcast?

Okay.

You want to talk about? Okay. So basically that's like a big podcast. If you get on that one, you're going to get like a couple hundred thousand, if not like maybe a couple million views or so. So, so Daniel Priestley said, what's it like being on Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett? Some headline numbers. So this is basically what it's like to be on a big podcast. In one week, the episode was seen by 800,000 people on YouTube and about 400K on Spotify. We're getting an extra 200+ new signups a day for Score app, which is, I'm assuming, his SaaS product. 1,700 extra people booked onto live Zoom workshops I had scheduled. So let's consider that a webinar. So 1,700 webinar signups, 3,000+ people added me on LinkedIn, 9,000+ on Instagram. Half a dozen big podcasts have reached out, dozens of people submitting CVs to work with us. He says the experience itself was brilliant. Steven and his team are elite. Everything they do is a reflection of their commitment to being the best at what they do. They have their show refined into a repeatable process and they execute every step with precision, blah, blah, blah. And so, I find that interesting. I mean, that's what it's like to be on a big podcast.

Dude, look at Onnit and Joe Rogan. Onnit crushed it because of him.

Yeah. All these people doing these equity deals, right? And oh, here's another thing. This will be the last thing. I was playing poker recently in Vegas and I was looking—

Did you win? Knock on wood for good luck.

Didn't win. Didn't win. It was a tough night.

Did you lose a lot?

What defines a lot? No, I didn't lose a lot. Wait, define what not a lot is. I don't know.

No, no, how much did you lose?

You know that. I don't know. I don't know. Just give me a rough number. No, I don't know. But anyway—

Wait, more than 10 grand or less?

I don't know. But—

That's more than 10 grand.

I have no idea. But I was talking. So I was sitting with this guy, right? And then he was wearing—

Wait, more than 20 grand?

Dude, I don't know.

More than 30 grand?

I still don't know.

Yes, you do.

You're gonna keep asking. I don't know. So this guy— More than a million? No, no.

Okay. It was more than 20 or 30.

No, I didn't. So, um, there's a guy wearing an Oura Ring, right?

Okay.

And then, um, and I saw another guy wearing one. And then we started talking about sleep. It's like, okay, tell me your score, blah, blah, blah, right? And then we started talking about sleep. And then we brought up Eight Sleep. Okay. And then there's a guy sitting over at the table. He's wearing like a Burberry shirt, right? And it's like the patterns and everything. I was like, okay, he's wearing like a nice watch. I was like, He's like, yeah, I bought an Eight Sleep for my family. I bought 4 of them. I was like, wait a minute, because I invested in Eight Sleep, right? I was like, how did you hear about it? And then he's like, well, I was listening to the Huberman podcast. And I was like, oh damn, because each Eight Sleep is about $2,500 or so. So he bought—

Oh, that's a lot.

That's like $10,000.

You're really playing at a high stakes poker table.

No, no, no. And then I was like, oh, interesting. Yeah. He's like, me and my brother. I was like, so you guys are in business, right? He's like, yeah. And so the point is, that podcast ads work. And like, we're seeing podcasts here work. It just depends if it's the right niche. It has to be related. It has to be related.

Yes.

Yeah, like if we're talking about Eight Sleep here, probably won't work as well as us talking about like HubSpot CRM.

Totally agree.

Yeah. Anyway, that's, that's it on this one. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe and go to marketingschool.io/agency if you're an agency owner, if you want to grow faster. That's the group that Neil and I have created. It's like YPO and EO, but for agencies. All right, catch you later.