MBA1332 What is TikTok and Do You Need To Start Using It? + Free Ride Friday!

Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter?

Right?

And the best part? They accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so. Jennifer. Oh, yeah. Huh? Discover is accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby, get with the times.

Right. So we shouldn't get the parachute pants.

These are making a comeback, I think.

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.

Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event, celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium support, and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster. And with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey, today is Free Ride Friday, so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's Free ride. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to Ezcourse, our course on how to build your own online course in 30 days. It retails for $500 over at EasyCourse Co, but we're giving it away for free on Fridays. All you got to do is leave us a rating and review on itunes to enter our weekly random draw. Once you leave us a review, you've entered the draw for every week until you win. Just listen in on Friday to see if you won any. It's that simple. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on itunes. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the latest in business strategies that actually matter. Delivered every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you will learn what is TikTok and do you need to start using it? It seems like every year or so a new player in the social media game arises, whether it's Instagram or Snapchat or now TikTok. What is it, how is it used and should you use it in your business? That's what we cover in today's episode. If you didn't know, TikTok is the fourth largest social media network in the world after Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Yeah, they're larger than Twitter, larger than LinkedIn. What is this thing and why Is it so big? But most importantly, can you leverage its power to grow your reach and grow your business? That's what we'll learn today. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. First of all, a little bit of a history lesson about TikTok. TikTok was first musically or Musical Ly, and it started as a video sharing app for musicians, people that are into music, singing, song, all that kind of stuff, right? Short video clips. 15 seconds. However, though, in August of 2018, musical ly got bought by a Chinese company. And that Chinese company changed the brand, changed the name of the app and called it TikTok and has opened it up to all types of people, all types of markets and genres, not just music, not just musicians, but anybody who wants to share short form video. Just to give you an idea of ITS growth, in 2016, they had 0 users. Today they have over 500 million active users. That is incredible growth. Again, their main focus is only short form video. 15 seconds. Now, you might be saying, well, Instagram does stories and so does Facebook, but they also do other things like posts and photos and all that kind of stuff. And this shows you the power of niching down. This shows you the power of doing one thing only and doing it right. And in fact, In October of 2018, TikTok became the most downloaded app on the App Store. So by now you probably feel like, man, I've been living under a rock. How did I hear about this TikTok thing? It's totally okay. It's because it's grown so fast so quickly, and a lot of celebrities have been using TikTok and kind of endorsed it. Jimmy Fallon is one that's been huge on TikTok. So he's not a musician, but he's a comedian. But he shares his comedy and his show and all that kind of stuff and his little adventures with 15 second videos. And in fact, he was so in love with the app, he started a challenge called the Tumbleweed Challenge, where he challenged people to shoot themselves rolling around like Tumbleweed. I know it sounds silly, but hey, it's comedy. And over 8,000 people entered this challenge and over 10 million people engaged with these posts. So TikTok is also known for being very local focused. So they'll run local challenges in your area. So even though it's a global app, you know, it detects your location and will run a challenge just for people in your city. Now, why is TikTok so popular? Well, they are basically what Instagram was to photos, people Love Instagram, or they loved Instagram when they got started because it allowed them to share their photos and make them look great with filters. Right? Well, they've done the same thing with video. They made it easy for you to shoot, create and share these videos easily on TikTok, and viewing them is just as easy as well. And basically TikTok is becoming the new vlogging. So people used to shoot long, daily videos and put it up on YouTube, talking about their daily lives and kind of like a day in a life and how they go about it. Casey Neistat is one of the most popular vloggers out there. He had a daily vlog for over two years. But what TikTok does is it allows you to be a daily vlogger without a film crew, without having to shoot and edit long video. They're 15 seconds. You can actually give people a glimpse of your life and your business, in our case, really quickly, on a daily basis. It allows you to have a regular daily piece of content go out to your audience. And this is where TikTok is quite magical. It lowers the barrier of entry, allows you to get into the content game easily. Something as simple as turning on your phone, flipping on the camera and saying, hey, everybody, good morning. This is what I'm working on today in the business. We're really excited about these goals. Tell me what you're excited about, what you're working on today in the comments, I'll check you tomorrow. That kind of thing where you share the experience, where you tell people what you're working on, you get them involved in how you actually create. What you create in your business is a great way to grow your audience. And they make it simple because again, short format, it's right on your phone, doesn't have to be perfect, and you're done in seconds. Now, TikTok's appeal is that it's so new, there's no ads. It's like the Wild west, basically. And people are using the platform to promote their brand. They use hashtags, they use the TikTok challenges, they challenge their audience. Hey, do this, do that, and use this hashtag, and it allows you to get exposure. Now, another reason why it's so appealing to many entrepreneurs is that it's so new. And a lot of people that join a platform when it's new, they have a competitive advantage to gather the market, to gather their audience and really get a leg up in that space. Imagine you joined Twitter when it first started, or in the first couple years, you'd probably Have a whole lot more Twitter followers, you'd have more of a presence. Same thing with Instagram. So this is your chance if you miss those boats. If you like video getting in early in the game, when it comes to the app itself, it's one of the fastest growing apps ever. So it does look like it will sustain itself. I'm very critical when I see a new app, new social media app, you know, how long is this going to last? But the fact that they're the fourth largest app already, more than LinkedIn, more than Twitter, and totally under the radar, and they're not even making money yet, meaning that they're not even running ads, wait until that happens, they will blow up. So should you be using it? Well, number one, if you're comfortable in front of the camera, if you are into video content, then I highly recommend it because it's an easy way for you to get involved in social media and get involved with your audience and you can shoot a quick video every day. It's a great way to vlog. Number two, it's early in the game, with TikTok, you can start growing that audience. Number three, I highly recommend anything that forces you to communicate and video is one of them. It's going to improve your communication skills. The better you learn how to communicate your ideas, the better you're going to be at sales, the better you're going to be at writing copy, the better you're going to be at presentations and being on stage. Communication is the mother of all skills in business. So should you jump onto TikTok, my opinion is you should definitely at least check it out, download the app, take a look at it, create a profile, you know, spend 30 minutes or something to just get familiar with it and give yourself a challenge. See if it's something that you like, give it a shot. Say, hey, for the next week, I'm going to shoot a TikTok once a day and share what I'm working on. Give a piece of advice, share a struggle I went through, give some inspiration to my audience and see how it goes. See if it's such a time commitment, if it comes easy to you, if it doesn't suck so much of your time, if you're not consumed by it. Because if it only takes, let's say, five to 10 minutes a day to do your thing on TikTok, it's pretty good time versus ROI investment to get and build your social network. Every other social network I know, like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, it requires more time investment for you to produce good content. If you're somebody who wants to break out of your self consciousness, this is a good exercise just to go for this challenge for a week. And hey, sharing a little bit about yourself will build your brand and also allow people to learn more about who's behind the business. A lot of people like buying the why and not the what. Why you built this, why you're doing this, why you've grown this company. People love to be inspired and led.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Edu.

To wrap up today's lesson, TikTok is definitely worth a look. Download it, Give it a try. It could be your go to content. It could be your go to thing and a great way to have your one little social media network that you focus on and grow that audience. It may be not, but you're not going to know unless you try. There's nothing wrong with doing a trial a week where you challenge yourself to and give it a shot in real life. If video is not your thing, then it's okay, you don't need to be a part of it. But if it is, it's a golden opportunity. It's a great window right now and it at least deserves a try. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I hope it helped you and your business goals. But today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. We got to give away a lifetime membership to Ezcourse. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is the Shoe College. And the Shoe College says daily inspiration 5 stars. Life altering information on nearly all topics delivered in an engaging and entertaining way that really gets you going. Thank you the Shoe College for that great review. You are our Free I Friday winner. Your mission is to email me over at Omar MBA Net so I can hook you up with the Free Ride to EZCOURS, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course over at easycourse Co. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an iTunes rating review. It's that simple. It's how you enter the weekly random draw. Just listen in on Friday to see if you won. All right, before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're a listener of the show, if you know me or have been following me for some time, you know I'm not a huge, huge, huge advocate or fan of social media. I believe in focus. I believe in deep work. And I'm not so big on social. I'm probably the most active on Twitter. But I do understand the power of social media. I do understand the power of audience. And I'm not against social media. I'm just against spending an unhealthy amount of time there. And I say unhealthy. I mean in terms of your return on investment, your time is your biggest asset. You shouldn't be spending hours on it if it's not getting you a huge ROI. So if TikTok doesn't require you to be on there for hours is minutes or seconds, and it allows you to share and grow your audience, I'm all for that. And I'm also for experimenting and challenging my beliefs. Sometimes you could be wrong. Right? And that's why I like to tackle and share these types of topics. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.