Creative Strategies for TikTok, Instagram Stories and More

Well, greetings everybody. Welcome to the Wednesday, July 29th, 2020 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. Eric here from my mobile office. I'm actually joining you from my RV in central Pennsylvania where I'm on a little bit of a workcation. I guess if that's the right way to phrase it. I was supposed to be down here teaching for one of the banking schools for the Pennsylvania Bankers Association, and that due to COVID got canceled and has been pushed to January now of 2021. Hopefully by then we'll be able to actually get together and hang out with everybody in person. But I had this campsite reserved. It actually has some of my favorite mountain biking trails in all of the country and just decided I would still come down and work remotely. The hashtag #WFH, work from home, everybody's had to figure out ways to work without coming into the office. We've been doing that here within the WSI world ever since inception 13 years ago. So we're actually trying to coin a new hashtag, #WFA, which is really work from anywhere. And I'm really excited to be doing this week's Free Webinar Wednesdays from the campsite. So today's show and all shows are recorded and made available at freewebinarwednesdays.com, although admittedly I'm a little behind on my video editing and there's a few shows that still haven't made it up there yet, but they are saved and in the can and just need a little TLC from yours truly to get them on the website. But that'll happen sooner than later. If you are joining live and you have comments or questions or thoughts, or you're just curious on what kind of a mountain bike I'm riding these days, and you'd like to interact with me and my special guest, who I'm going to announce very shortly, feel free to use the chat function and interact. These are live shows, as is evidenced by A lot of tongue tripping and misspoken words on my part, but that's okay. That's what a live show is all about, right? So today's show, I am super excited and I couldn't convince her to go on webcam. So you're just getting me for the time being until we start sharing screens and getting her to actually show us some cool stuff that she's been doing. But, uh, I think this is second or third time on the show, Ellie. You'll have to— Maybe update me on how many times you've been on, but Ellie Humphreys, who is our head of marketing here at WSI and started working with us when she was in college as an intern and then came full-time, went back and got her MBA while working for us full-time, and now she's no longer in school formally, but she's always learning something cool. On the internet. And during one of our recent TikToks, which now we're up over 60, which have all been implemented and instituted by her, she shared a really cool video. If you're not following us on TikTok, you need to be. And I'll have Ellie make sure she shares everybody the URL so you can make sure that you get to our TikTok channel. But she shared a really cool video on how she goes about creating Instagram stories and the cool little apps that she has on her phone to be able to do all sorts of things. And it went really fast and there was a lot to it and it looked really cool. And I said, you know, I think this is something that the Free Webinar Wednesdays audience would like to know about and how you can do those and maybe share a little bit around why we're on TikTok as an agency that primarily focuses on banks, because there's probably not a lot of bankers on TikTok looking for services. But what some of the things that we've done on TikTok and how we're using that to cross-pollinate in other channels and to just have a dialogue and talk about some of the cool stuff that we're doing within WSI Digital and how that all kind of rolls out. So, Ellie, I'm gonna let you say something. Welcome to the show. Are you there?

I'm here.

You didn't hang up on me yet, did you?

Yeah, yeah.

You're like, I listen to him all day long, why do I have to sit on a webinar and listen to him? But I'm super excited, and I guess 2 things that I wanted to talk about before we get into your stuff, because you've also been involved in this effort as well, and Free Webinar Wednesdays folks, especially those that are in the banking space, have heard me talk about the Linked Banker, which is our new community initiative to help banking professionals better leverage digital and social tools on building their own personal brand online. And Ellie and Madison from our team, uh, who I think might also be on just joining as a lurker attendee who's not an official presenter, although I told her, think of some stuff and I'm going to bring you on and a guest on a future show. But we are in the process of updating— let me turn off my Google Analytics here— we're in the process of updating thelinkedbanker.com from this Look and feel, which I think is a pretty cool looking site to to this. It's gonna have even cooler stuff, and not cooler because it's got my picture all over, which is kind of funny. Ellie knows how much I love having my picture all over everything. But this is gonna have an even more engaging appearance for people that are interested in learning about the Link Banker and sharing some thoughts and ideas around what we're doing. So. Um, so stay tuned, Linked Bankers, because a new and improved website is coming to a browser near you very soon. So with that out of the way, Ellie, I think I'm going to go ahead and turn off my camera to preserve bandwidth. And I, um, I've got this article, so bye for now, everybody. I've got this article that you shared with me on Instagram and Social Media Examiner, and of course we love Social Media Examiner, and we've been to their Social Media Marketing World a number of times. So maybe some thoughts on this article as it leads you to inspiration, thoughts from Social Media Marketing World conferences. You're just doing a ton of cool stuff, and I probably just need to shut up and let you talk, so I'm going to do that right now.

All right. Well, I originally sent this article over because the other day it was my turn from our team to create a TikTok. And my TikTok was specifically based on Instagram story hacks. So I did a little research and this article, it wasn't near the top of Google, but when I saw socialmediaexaminer.com, I knew it was one I wanted to look at. So I scrolled through here and read through the tips that this lady provided, and a lot of them are ones that I honestly never would have thought of. Like at the top, she talks about putting a halo around an object in the image, and I was like, what does that even mean? And but it's honestly, it's to draw your eye towards what she's trying to show off. So she's trying to show a part of her website off on her laptop and she just, just circling it like that, it draws your eyes right to it. So I just read through this article and skimmed to see what she was doing. And she did a lot of cool things with people on her team, with sharing her own content, even just pictures of her face. She would take a selfie and then create some sort of caption or interactive way to share it. So she would, like, today I'm at Social Media Examiner, and then she would put something under it like, ask a question, or what do you think, or did you listen to my webinar? So there's just a lot of cool aspects because when you look at an Instagram story from a personal perspective, it's usually just someone sharing a Picture or video or something and you're just watching it. But when it's from a business side, when there's something interactive with it, it makes it a lot easier to engage with people. So what we've been trying to do more of is when we actually post on Instagram, we will try to reshare that post to our story and ask, have you seen our Free Webinar Wednesday episode today? Or Are you interested? Because there's different things that you can do now on stories such as stickers, survey questions. There's just all sorts of interactive stuff which makes it easier to engage with people other than just posting a photo. So that's kind of where this article came about is I was trying to figure out ways to make our Instagram stories look cool and then also share that on TikTok. So a lot of the ones I did had to do with backgrounds, doing different stuff with the fonts and texts, because that always makes it more interesting to look at when you're not just putting a bunch of words on there, but you're actually putting backgrounds on the text, making them look 3D. So, and all that you can do right in the actual Instagram app. So you would never think that, but it's kind of a designer app within itself. You just have to Take the time to kind of layer stuff and draw and erase and basically do all sorts of things to make it look like you put it in a platform and created a design. So, yep. And like—

So I guess I, I didn't— I, let me just— I didn't realize that you, when you created that TikTok video for us, I didn't realize that all of that you did just natively right within the Instagram platform. Is that, is that what I'm hearing? You didn't use a third-party app that you learned about in San Diego? Everything was just done right within Instagram?

Yeah, so I did— I think there was 4 designs I did in that TikTok video. The first 3 were natively and the last one was in Canva just to show, okay, what you could do. It does take more time when you do it natively because you're literally designing your own Template or backgrounds and text overlay. But when you do it like in Canva, it's all right there for you. You're just kind of piecing it all onto one picture. So it's whether you want to design the template or you already want the template designed for you is kind of the difference.

Man, cool. So for— I'm just gonna scroll back up to the top again. So for folks that are joining the show and they're not familiar with Canva, Um, I know I've talked about it before, but maybe for the audience's benefit, just to assume not everybody knows all the cool things that you know, what is Canva? What do you use it for? Obviously Instagram, but what other things does Canva do for you and for us here at WSI?

So Canva is basically a graphic design platform For non-designers. So like, I did not go to school for design. I have really no background in it besides I was kind of artsy when I was younger. So it's a very easy-to-use drag-and-drop design program. And it is meant for small businesses because usually small businesses, they don't have their own graphic designers. So it's perfect for, it's perfect for anyone that really needs to post something or make something look cool for their own company. So Canva, it does unlimited amount of stuff. You can create infographics, brochures, emails, animated social media posts, PowerPoint presentations, videos, logos, invitations, flyers. It just goes on and on. I've actually created stuff in Canva that's not even work-related. One of my friends was getting married and she needed, um, a frame created for her little Polaroid table. It was like snap it, stick it, write something. I, I don't really remember the quote, but I just went in and I made a flyer, printed it out, and framed it, and it looked like I had bought it from some professional graphic designer off Etsy or something. So it's just crazy because you can do just a number of things. You can create book covers, YouTube channel art. It just goes on and on and on.

So when I started doing the business 13 years ago and I wanted to do something cool— this is going to make me sound like an old fart, but I'm going to say it anyway— You know, we would go into platforms like Photoshop, which were very complicated, steep learning curve, or Illustrator, and try to come up. Or you do something like in Microsoft Publisher, which at the end of the day, it looked like you created it in Microsoft Publisher and it wasn't really web-friendly and a little bit on the juvenile side. This now, basically, like you said, you don't have to have graphics design formal training, there's a lot of templates here that give you the ability to really come up with some really cool stuff. You know, whenever I visit Canva, I always wish that I had a separate life with more time where I could get in and just play and explore some of these creative things. But alas, that's not the case. But not only we use this for our team, but you've actually done some pretty cool stuff for our clients. In Canva and, you know, sent that over. And so, you know, advertisements and banners and other sorts of things. So certainly from an agency's perspective, we're using it for our customers to make it easy for us to produce really cool stuff that, that they like. So Canva, super, super cool. So. Um, well, what I'm wondering now, would you be able to do the screen shifting and maybe I can go ahead and make you the presenter and you can maybe hop in and show some of what you've done and give us maybe a little walk around, maybe take us over to our TikTok channel and you can talk how people can find us on TikTok and some of those things? What do you think?

Yeah, yeah, that works.

Cool. All right, so let me work the little magic to turn you into the presenter. And I think one of the things that you mentioned as part of the TikToks was syndicating that into other platforms. And so I think that's another important thing To talk about how we're getting exposure in other areas, even if TikTok's where it ultimately starts, how the benefit can be to put it into other areas where people can come across that. So, all right.

I'm trying to get it to pull up. My screen's not showing, right?

Do not see your screen yet. Nope. While we're waiting, uh, and experiencing the joys of live webinars, as a reminder, if you are attending live and you've got a question or something that you are curious to know or something that you'd like Ellie to go over when we finally get screen sharing to work, feel free to toss it into the chat area and I'll keep an eye on that.

Okay. I might be able to— I had to allow my system preferences or something to let me show.

Ellie's got a new computer and the joys of a new computer, every time you try to do something for the first time, they're so locked down with permissions and Authentication that yeah, so you might have to go into your little Mac. There we go. Look at that.

What are you looking at? The screen.

I see your Canva folder recent with see the dividend mortgage ads and then the we're in this together. There's a social media 2020 with me giving Ryan Kelly a big old man smooch.

Okay, yep, we're on we're on track then.

There we go.

All right. So where should we start?

Well, I guess you know maybe you want to start with because I think one of the things that spurred the idea to bring you on the show today is TikTok. So first off, maybe why did we get on TikTok? How do people find WSI on TikTok? Do you need to have an account in order to view TikToks? Um, and I will caution you, if you get into TikTok, it has a really, really good algorithm of finding you nonsensical, time-wasting— um, before you know it, you're an hour into TikTok and you didn't even know an hour had passed by. So tread very carefully in TikTok because it will suck you in. It does a really good job of knowing what you like and feeding that to you almost like a little bit of a drug. So if you're not on TikTok now, just be forewarned, it's a very addictive platform, but it has a lot of good info and I've actually learned some really cool things in it in addition to being entertained. So here we are on TikTok.

Here we are. So this is our business account. Our handle is what it is for all of our social medias, @poweredbywsi.com. And I believe we are officially up to 65 TikToks, maybe not sure, 60-something. So this all just kind of became an idea back in March, April when COVID first hit, TikTok seemed to be taking off more than any other social media platform, basically because it's entertaining. So when everyone got stuck at home, they weren't just getting on Facebook or Instagram looking at pictures and cooking videos. They found something more entertaining like TikTok. And TikTok is basically the new Vine, if you know what Vine is. Vine was another short-form video company that was bought out by Twitter. Twitter, and then eventually it was shut down. So this app has kind of overtaken that, and it actually has a lot more potential. You can create anywhere from a 5-second video to a minute video. So it's really being used as entertainment, and it's a very, very big platform for trends. So once there is a trend, you will see it all over the entire platform for about a week or two straight, and then they'll be on to the next trend. So it's kind of funny because you'll be scrolling and it's like, why is everyone doing this same exact dance? But it's because it's a trend. The dance and the song is a trend. And then the next one, you'll see someone doing their makeup or something crazy with their hair, and then someone else will copy the same thing. So the platform is all about trends, copying what other people are doing, listening to the same type of music. So And the nice thing about it, it's not really a platform that takes a lot of design or creativity. You simply just turn it on and film yourself doing something. And it has music in it that you choose from. You can add text to it. You can use these crazy filters if you want to. It's kind of almost like Snapchat in a way, but you're actually recording, recording your video and posting it. You're not just Sending it. So yeah, but this is our this is our TikTok, and we've used it to do a bunch of different stuff. We've tried to tie most of it into business related, but we also have the occasional fun ones. So for instance, like right here, this is Happy Sushi Day. Everyone in our company. had sushi and they were on video. Um, this is probably Eric giving an update about— oh, I think this is about Amazon Alexa. So he's talking about if he prefers Google or Alexa. And then we just, we just do a bunch of stuff. And a lot of it's like, some of it's awareness, like buying from Amazon Smile instead of Amazon to raise money for charities. Project management platforms. This is actually the example we were talking about earlier that I made yesterday or 2 days ago, just about simple things you can do on Instagram stories. So a lot of stuff we share is tips and tricks for digital marketing, or it's stuff just to be funny, to lighten the mood, especially with everything that's been going on in the world. So It's just a fun platform because it kind of takes you away from the seriousness of working in business, and it's just an easier, more laid-back way to share content. So yeah.

Let's just watch this. Now we've got music in the background that would normally be playing as well, so you've got that turned off, but you can just kind of see how Ellie's blowing through this. Super, super fast, and then it recycles. And so as you're on TikTok, if you are looking for ideas to help your business or your bank, as it were, from, you know, our world, which we hope, you're going to see that come up. It's going to cycle, cycle, cycle. When you engage with a TikTok, talk a little bit about Commenting and liking and saving and favoriting, because I know that's one of the things you have to have an account for if you want to engage. But certainly anybody could go to tiktok.com/@poweredbywsi and see all our videos. You don't have to have an account, and you can do it on your phone or you could do it on a computer. So engagement, and I know you can see that like the 300s and the 96s, what do those numbers mean? Um, yeah, yeah.

So basically, um, so up here, the likes, that's how many likes we have personally gotten. No other platform shows that, so it's kind of interesting. Every platform has the following and followers, but it actually shows you how many likes. So on my, on my personal account, um, I might pull that up later. I have like thousands of likes because one of my videos actually went viral and had over 18,000 views. So it's kind of crazy because down here, the— this number means how many people have just watched the video, and then you have the likes in the comments section, and then also the music. So if you like the sound— right now I have it turned off— but if you like the music, you can actually click on this sound and it will take you to a page with more people making videos with that same sound. So, um, and that's kind of like with Discover. You can look things up based on trends, based on which are usually by hashtags. So a lot of trends are either followed by a hashtag or a song. So like this one is a hashtag and this one is the song Then Leave. And there's different people doing dances. I actually recreated this video with some of my friends. It's just a song and everyone turns and says their part. I mean, there's really no purpose to it, but it's a trend, so everyone's doing it and watching it and liking your video. Um, but yeah, it just kind of goes on and on, which— that's the nice thing about TikTok is, I mean, other social media platforms, they do have outlets for you to see What's trending and what's going on, like almost like a news feed, but they don't necessarily have the discover. I mean, Twitter kind of does with their hashtags, but it just makes it easy to follow trends. And basically, the number one, the number one way to go viral on TikTok is if you see a trend and it's at its very, very starting point. So if I got on TikTok today. And I saw 2 people do the same thing, that means a trend is starting. And your easiest way to go viral is to do that trend as soon as possible. That is actually something I learned at Social Media Marketing World listening to one of the ladies speak there about TikTok. She said as soon as you see a new trend happening, if you hop on it right away, more than likely your video will go viral. So it— because they will do these dancing videos and all sorts of stuff But you'll notice that in a week or two later, you won't see any of those videos anymore. So if you hop on the trend as soon as you see the first one, chances are it'll go viral. And that's kind of how one of my videos—I posted two different videos to play with the TikTok algorithm—and one was actually doing way better than the other one. And now they both tied. One has, I think, 863 likes. And one has 860 maybe, and they both have over 18,000 views. So it's just funny, um, kind of how the system works. But—

Now the trick there obviously is just because you see 2 videos doing something doesn't mean that that's going to be the one that's going to blow up. You could actually replicate something that nobody else really replicates, and then it just kind of dies on the vine. So I, I would suspect. So you have to be somewhat selective in taking a look at a video that's starting to get some repetition and go, this is probably going to have some legs and other people would want to do it. Um, or I mean, how do you know if something is going to gain popularity and show up on the For You page so that other people will start seeing what it is that you're doing? And being part of that trend.

So yeah, and that's kind of how— that's how my video, both my videos got a lot of views was because what the video that I did, it was a song. It was about 15 seconds maybe, and it was me lip-syncing it, but it was like the thing to do. That was like the song you would see everyone just record themselves Singing it. Like, I mean, it has absolutely no value, but for some reason people like it. So, and that's kind of where it does— that's kind of where it's like, how do people go viral? Well, honestly, I don't think they even know how they go viral. It's just you follow a trend, and then all of a sudden I wake up the next day and I look at my TikTok and it has 18,000 views. It's not like I posted it thinking that was gonna happen.

Right. So let's chat a little bit about cross-pollination and how you're taking these TikToks and getting them into other networks. Because like I said, there's probably not a lot of active bankers out there on TikTok looking for a digital agency to help them. I mean, and we're not doing TikTok just for lead generation. We're doing it to explore and have some fun. But if we wanted to get in front of our audience, and obviously we're interested in bankers, but whoever's listening, you may have a different audience. How easy is it to take those TikToks and push them into Facebook, which is where you're at right now, or into Twitter or into LinkedIn, so that we do get an opportunity to expose those videos to audiences and other platforms?

So it's actually very simple. So if I click on this video that Maddie from our team made yesterday, you have the ability to share it directly to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter. You can even get the embedded code, which is very cool because for a social platform, that's not always the case. So if you wanted to embed this on your website, this video directly, you could do that. But what I usually do is I just come on here after we post And I'll just copy the link.

Okay.

I don't do it, I don't do it through like sharing on Facebook because I have my, I have so many accounts linked to it. So for me it's easier just to hit copy link and then I go into Facebook, create a post, and Facebook natively, once you have a link in there, it will pull it up. So then I just get rid of that and then I write a caption.

Cool.

Like this would be something about Maddie, what the video is about, and then I post it. So you can see they're all on here. Every time we post a TikTok, they get posted directly to our Facebook page as well.

Sweet. Super easy, super simple. I think everybody can do that.

So And sometimes, and for like our brand, The Linked Banker, if I can pull it up, um, I have actually taken— because we put some TikToks on our, our WSI TikTok page, we put some on there that have to do with The Linked Banker because we have not created a separate account for TikTok, and I don't think we will because we It's not really necessary at this point, but we'll create some on TikTok. And then I also go and I post them on the Link Bankers Instagram like this right here. This was a TikTok. So was this video and so was this one. So it just kind of, you don't even know it, but I'm creating enough content to share on multiple platforms at the end of the day. And when you upload to TikTok, you get the version That you post automatically saves to your phone. So if I put all these cool captions and little videos or stickers on the video, as soon as I post it, it automatically saves and downloads to my phone. So I can go over to Instagram and just upload it and it will have the same text and stuff on it.

Sweet. Very cool.

Very cool. And then—

So, keep going. I don't want to interrupt you.

Oh, no, I was just saying, and we have our, we have our accounts linked in our bio there, so I can click over to this one really quick. This, this profile for our WSI, this is a good example of how we use Canva. A lot of all of these posts are, are built in Canva and designed. So go ahead, what were you gonna ask?

Well, I was gonna say, if you scroll back up to the top, the green little circles there, I don't use those in my Instagram, but I know you use those. Maybe you can talk a little bit about What those are and what sort of content goes in those green circle areas or the— yeah.

So these are stories. So if I post a story to my Instagram page, I have the ability to, once it runs out of time, so after 24 hours, once it's gone, it can stay gone and be archived. So it automatically, no matter what you post, on Instagram Story, it automatically archives. And I don't think a lot of people know that, but if you actually go into your settings on your Instagram account, all of your stories that you've ever posted have archived. And that is how you have the ability to create these story buttons, because you can go into your settings and link those stories to these buttons. So basically they're always there, they're not running out. So I, I would have to log in, but we have like what, um, the mentor— this sticker right here has a story that pops up about who Eric is. Um, we have who the Linked Banker is about. So under each of these is stories we've actually already shared, but they're not active, like live right now, I guess you could say, on our story. But we still have them here so people can view them.

So you can still get to them.

Yeah, because they're valuable. Yeah.

So, yep. Well, and I think that's one of the things, because stories actually came around as Facebook, which is the owner of Instagram, which I'm still surprised at the number of people that don't realize that Instagram is owned by Facebook, but it is. But Facebook several years ago tried to buy TikTok— or not TikTok, Snapchat. There's so many platforms, I keep getting them mixed up. But Facebook Wanted to buy Snapchat because Snapchat had started this concept of ethereal content, meaning you create something that lasts a very short period of time and then it disappears, which means it demands your attention because you wanna pay attention to it before it goes bye-bye. And when Snapchat basically told Zuckerberg, no, we're not selling, then they went and decided to replicate a lot of what Snapchat had done to become so popular, and it introduced stories. And so a lot of people think, like you said, that once you do a story, it's there for 24 hours and then it disappears and it's gone forever, much like it is on Snapchat. But you can pull those in and make them live so that as people are browsing your Instagram account, they can still see what those were, even if it was a story that you posted 6 months ago, you can update that. So it still has very much the temporary, ethereal, disappearing feel because the stories will appear in your feed when you're browsing. But then if somebody happens to come back to your actual account, you still have the ability to show all that information. Because like you said, that's valuable content and it's hopefully stuff that people are going to want to see. So it's kind of cool. And I don't know how many people are attending today's webinar that might have even known that. So, um, just dropping all sorts of knowledge bombs.

Yeah, well, and stories have become— they've started on Snapchat like you said, and it was just to kind of show people what you were doing. a video or a picture like, hey, I'm up north outside at a bonfire. But now it's come to the point where you can literally go on Canva or other platforms like this one and you— I can type in Instagram story and I can pick a template and make basically anything I want. So It's just, it's crazy because it used to just be kind of a way to update people on your day, and now it's a way to share so much different types of content. Yeah. So I know, and I know when we started quarantining in the beginning of all this COVID stuff, a lot of people were sharing interactive stuff on their stories. Like, for instance, this might be a good one. So I would share this on my story and basically tag a few friends and say, hey, I did this challenge, now you do it. Do you choose flats or heels? And then they circle one. Sneakers or sandals? And they circle one. And then they tag 3 friends that they want to do it. So it's just, it just kind of turned into a, I don't even really know how to explain it. I can't explain it. It just went from one thing to being anything. It became entertainment during quarantine. It's a— it's just, there's so many ways to interact on it now.

Yeah. Well, I think the one thing that if you're going to be successful on social media, you have to figure out a way to be interesting and to stand out. And I think you've been able to do that really well through a lot of the inspirational designs on Canva. And I know you don't have any formal art training per se, You know, I think we've got at least a couple of your paintings hanging in our house, and you are a very crafty, creative, artistic person. So this just allows for that to come through. So it stands out and it looks different than what everybody else is producing. But the other thing that I think is important is figuring out a way that you can get people to interact with each other so that they're not just a passive— they look at it and they see it and that's it. Because as a brand or as an individual, or, you know, you want to be able to know or get signals that what you're producing is of interest to people and doing things that gets, you know, like you're, like you said, flats or heels, uh, sneakers or sandals. Um, while it's not a story, LinkedIn brought back the polling feature. And so I recently created a poll, didn't have any graphical elements to it, but on LinkedIn questioning what webinar platform people are gravitating towards, whether it's Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or GoToWebinar, GoToMeeting, and then asking people to comment in the actual post comments below after they voted. As to, you know, why did you pick Teams or why did you pick this or what other platforms? And I'm getting people that are saying, you know, what about BlueJeans or what about WebEx or what about Adobe Connect? And so now we're creating dialogue and conversation on those LinkedIn engagements beyond, oh, you got a golden retriever, so I'm just going to get distracted now because there's a golden on screen. But it's figuring out ways that you can get people to interact with each other. And these are really great ways to do that on all those other platforms where the creativity kind of flows in. So one, I guess, takeaway lesson for anybody that's listening is what are you sharing and how are you building connectivity and sparking conversation? an interaction with your audience as opposed to just broadcasting information and hoping that they're consuming it. Um, Facebook made a statement last year that they want their platform to feel more like a conversation with friends at a coffee shop than necessarily somebody standing on stage bellowing a message to a room full of people. Broadcast versus conversation. The latter being much more desirable, um, in many aspects. So it's your flats versus heels picture inspired that little rambling. So I appreciate you indulging me.

Well, because what I was going to say is this, um, example actually is kind of what inspired that TikTok I made a while ago. It was called this or that for organic versus non-organic, or no, I did a couple different versions. So this one is organic versus non-organic marketing, what the differences are. But I also did another one, this or that, this platform or that platform, basically which one I, I prefer. So this is another example of kind of how to create, and I shared this As a story because TikTok and Instagram stories—they're the same dimensions. So I took the same video and shared it on Instagram.

That's awesome. I noticed you did a little dance at the end there too. Nice job. Rest assured, anybody that sees me on TikTok knows that I will not be dancing. I don't know. Maybe someday, but at least thus far, not dancing.

All right. This is just another example of how we did it. We did this with our team out in California. We just threw something, they caught it, moved on to the next digital marketing tip. So yeah.

So you mentioned California, and I don't think people really realize Because you and Maddie are in there, but there's 2 other individuals that are on the complete other side of the country, yet we've collaborated with them. So maybe talk a little bit about how you can pull other people in and the strategy around collaboration. If you want to go back to that video and kind of give us a blow-by-blow.

Yeah, I can actually pull up another video we did with them. So within our WSI network, we, when we started doing TikTok, we kind of were just doing it on our own, but then came up with the idea of doing collaborations. So with some of our, I guess you can call them coworkers, friends, networkies, they're all over the world. So we kind of said, hey, we're on TikTok, we're making these videos, would you guys want to be in them? So, like in this video, half of us are actually all of our teams in this one. So this one's a you think you can dance. So all of us are just doing funny dances, and this video has no other value than just pure entertainment. So this was just to kind of lighten people's day. This was back in. April.

So yeah, so maybe I did dance for that one. Maybe I stand corrected. Yeah, you shut it off before anybody had to see that, so I appreciate it.

And we love using our dogs too because everyone loves dogs. Oh yeah. So yeah.

Cool. I could watch dog videos all day long, so Well, this has been great. I certainly appreciate you sharing your thoughts. And, I mean, I get to witness your creativity all the time, but not everybody really gets the benefit of that behind the scenes. So hopefully those of you that were on today's webinar were inspired, got some cool ideas, and might be interested in trying something new. I guess in closing, Ellie, if somebody were interested in giving something a shot, or out of all of what you've talked about today, and they wanted just one little nugget, something simple that they could try just to move them one step forward to doing something different, of all the things that you shared, what do you think would be the easiest thing for somebody to implement?

I think simply going to Canva, and you don't even really have to just create an account, it's free, and going through and just not— you don't even have to design anything, just click on something like, for instance, Facebook post, and just look at the different types of ways That people are creating and sharing content. So honestly, I get a lot of inspiration from just going on here and scrolling through these different designs that are already created. And a lot of times I'll create my own design or I'll click on one of them and I'll change something about it. So I think just kind of getting used to the whole design aspect and kind of noticing what looks good, what doesn't look good, and looking off of you know, these professionally made templates to kind of see. And this goes for anything. You can make PowerPoint templates or anything. So I think just kind of messing around with it. And then once you get comfortable with it, then start sharing the content on Instagram, TikTok. And Canva actually has TikTok templates now. So that's very, very cool.

I think they're the first— Wow.

Create TikTok templates. So cool. Yeah, very cool.

Sweet. Excellent advice. Good stuff. So hopefully everybody is, uh, inspired to go out and be creative and kind of get outside of their box a little bit and fly that creativity flag. So, Ellie, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thanks everybody for joining. Live and being part of our audience. We certainly appreciate you hanging out with us, mostly me, but today it's us because I've got a guest. But appreciate you showing up every week and being part of the Free Webinar Wednesdays family. So enjoy the remainder of your week. I will continue to remain socially distanced in central Pennsylvania, and with all luck, I will continue my mountain biking excursions injury-free. And, uh, make it back to Michigan this weekend just fine and be here for next week's show. So with that, take care everybody and make it a great week. See you later.