TikTok Organic Content Strategy

- Let's say, for example, you're casting a net to find new audiences, right? That net is essentially gonna be that second content pillar that we mentioned of original content and series-based videos. Why? Because it's a little bit more distinguishable, and it's a lot more likely to gain virality consistently, as opposed to a trend that's been done 50,000 times. (ambient music) - Today I'm very excited to be joined by Gerardo Perez. If you don't know who Gerardo is, he's a TikTok strategist and Foundr of marketing and a TikTok agency that helps app and e-commerce brands grow

their TikTok following. His course is called "How to Run TikTok Ads." Gerardo, welcome to the show. How you doing today? - Hi, Michael. Thanks for having me, man. I'm super excited. Definitely a bucket list moment for me. So hype to be here. - Well, super excited to have you on the show. Today Gerardo and I are gonna explore organic TikTok content strategy. But before we go there, I would love to hear your story. How in the world did you get into TikTok? Start wherever you wanna start. - Yeah, dude, for sure. So pre-pandemic, Gary V

was just going on a rampage about TikTok. Every other post I'd see of Gary was TikTok, TikTok, TikTok, biggest opportunity. You have to be on TikTok. You have to be on TikTok. And before then, I was kind of on the backend of social media, right? Just never really front facing. And I was really intrigued by it because I knew the power of personal brands. I've seen it time and time again with different figures, X, Y, Z. So I kind of put together a plan and proposed to myself to start creating content at least like three

times per weeks uploading, which at the time sounded like an insane amount of work, right? An insane amount of content, even though it's just like 15 seconds. But when you're getting into the game, it's quite daunting. Anyways, started posting content around December pre-pandemic, and little by little, just started amassing a following, talking about different concepts related to marketing business, at times, mindset and some of my favorite books as well, branding as well. And little by little, just started generating a voice on the platform as well. And obviously just stuck with it. - Tell me a

little bit about before you started TikTok, you said you were working kind of behind the scenes. Tell us a little bit of that story. What were you doing? - A 100%. So before TikTok, I was on the backend of social media, helping smaller brands, businesses, mom and pop shops, friends and family type businesses, either do anything related to Facebook, Instagram ads, Instagram management, all that fun stuff. So essentially what I'm doing now on TikTok, but at a much smaller scale, of course, because you have to start somewhere, but definitely TikTok was a huge, huge... What

would you call it? Like a leap pad for my career. - Or yeah, a leap pad. - Is that a word? - Yeah, absolutely. That's a word. Yeah, that's for sure word. So you got onto TikTok around December of 2020, before the pandemic, and you started posting. What happened? Tell us a little bit about that story. - Yeah, so I think it was my fourth or fifth video that I did a video called "top five books that every teen should read" and it kind of just took off. I think it amassed over 1.7 million views,

which to me was just insane, right? And I was just sharing basically books that I enjoyed reading in the past. A few of those, I think one of the most memorable ones, there's a great book by Alex Banayan called "The Third Door." If y'all haven't checked that out, definitely check it out. Great, great book. But it really talks about finding that third door in life, which is something that I truly believe in, and sort of finding a way to get into the rooms that you wanna be in, in life. But anyways, past that book recommendation

video, I started posting more videos related to stuff that I was interested in. And I'll be honest with you, Michael, at first my profile, the content on it was incredibly scattered. All over the place. But if you're starting out on TikTok, either on a personal brand level or on a brand level, I wanna encourage you to feel like that's okay, because over time you start refining your voice, you start seeing what your audience is actually responsive to, what they enjoy seeing and what you're best at communicating as well. It's okay to diversify your content. But

again, over time you really wanna refine what you wanna be known for. And I think it's been a content journey thus far in sort of, not reinventing myself, but redefining my content strategy as you go along, which I think is something that people at times can be a little bit intimidated by as well, both on the brand side and on the personal side. So it's definitely something that I encourage people to define and see and understand why they're creating content in the first place. - So you had this big viral hit with this "books that

teens should read." And somewhere along the way, you did a course and you started obviously your own business. So tell us a little bit about how you're dabbling with content and TikTok ultimately led to what you're doing today. - A 100%. So again, all based off of my personal videos on TikTok, I became absolutely obsessed with the platform, inside outs studying it. And I say the word studying intentionally, right? It was something that I wanted to see what the latest trends were. I wanted to see who the top creators were. I wanted to see what

type of content they were creating. I wanted to see what other creators in my space and just networking with people that were kind of coming up in a similar vertical as me, what they were up to. It quite literally became an obsession. And I like to actually say, I can speak three languages, English, Spanish, and TikTok, right? Because I do truly believe that. Yeah. I truly believe that TikTok is its own own language. It has its own feel. It has its own culture almost, right? So became absolutely obsessed. Little by little, I had some brands

actually reach out to me, asking for organic content. And I was kind of left myself scratching my head. Like okay, there's obviously a demand for this, but how can I actually fulfill that and execute with scale? And one of the things was I didn't wanna personally be front facing to their brands. The reason being is that becomes... You could imagine how that could become a speed bug for actual scalability. So what I ended up doing was in order to execute TikTok organic content for brands, obviously it's not Instagram where you can't just post a pretty

picture and kind of just wipe your hands clean of it. You need a personality behind the brand. So I started tapping into people that I have met on the app before, did a little bit of creator scouting, and essentially put together teams of content creators to help be the face of these specific brands. Now, the way that we systematize it, obviously it comes with time, right? But essentially, we create content scripts on a weekly basis for them. They get approved by the brand. They then get sent to the actual content creators for execution. They get

the final screen recordings to give the final thumbs up, the brand does. And we're essentially always operating one week in advance so that the brands can have a consistent flow of content with being hands off from the project as well. And definitely wanna chat more about the strategies that go behind that. And I don't wanna discourage smaller brands to thinking that it's that extensive or that complicated, because it's not. You can definitely simplify it to a certain degree. It's just that our process is more so for brands that wants a sort of a full outsourcing

of it, if that makes sense. - Totally. So you went on to do a course on TikTok ads as well. So does that mean you've also been working on the paid acquisition side on TikTok? - A 100%. I've been fortunate enough to actually work with Foundr. If y'all know Foundr, they are essentially an educational company at this point. I really like their business model, but I was absolutely thrilled to be able to partner with them, definitely great company. They have a great audience as well. And we essentially put together a course on three different subjects.

Number one is gonna be how to actually run TikTok ads. Number two is how to create content specific to TikTok ads, sort of like that UGC style content that's native to the platform, while at the same time more so designed for direct response. And we also have a entire section on organic content, which is pretty much what we're gonna be talking about today. - Very cool. Yeah. Nathan Chan has been on this show many, many years ago, and Foundr is F-O... It's without the E on Foundr. F-O- - Without the E, yeah, yeah, yeah. -

All right. Well, so there's a lot of people that are listening right now that maybe aren't yet focused on TikTok. Maybe they're all in on Instagram and Facebook, perhaps like you used to be before you got bit by the TikTok bug, if you will. Why should marketers be focusing on TikTok in your professional opinion? - Yeah, so quite simply put, if we take a look at the past two and a half to three years in the social media landscape, it seems like everyone's playing catch up to TikTok, right? It's been quite clear that they've been

the disruptors and they've almost been pioneering this wave of short form content as well. So obviously in the marketing space, whenever you see that disruption, you have to kind of bend your ear to it or at least open your eyes to it and acknowledge it, right? I think certain brands, they don't necessarily have to be on TikTok, right? It's very dependent from brand to brand, but I do believe that TikTok is the biggest opportunity for brands, especially startups or brands that specifically have what I like to call they're rich in time, but not necessarily rich

in assets just yet. I think it's your best content marketing strategy for a couple reasons. Obviously, one, the ability to actually cultivate attention and community on the app is second to none. And in addition to that, you can also repurpose all that content onto other platforms because, obviously, what works on TikToks seems to be working on other platforms like Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, you name it. - Excellent. Okay. So let's dig into your strategy step by step. Where do you wanna get started with your TikTok strategy? - Yeah, so every time we actually work with

clients, we start by establishing what I like to call content pillars. So essentially content pillars are a way for us to visually see on a consistent basis, all these different touch points that we wanNA include within our content. And mind you, oftentimes these content pillars actually overlap with one another. So nine times out of 10, it's gonna be three to four content pillars per brand. So number one is typically sort of trend-related content. A second sort of pillar that we like to establish is something that's a little bit more series-based or product-focused. What I mean

by series-based is essentially trying to find a series that works well with your audience and creates a ongoing just series. Right? So let's say for example, if someone comes across your video and you're at part 17 of a series, and this is the first time that they actually see your content. They're like, oh, I actually enjoyed that. I'm actually gonna go visit their profile and see what the other 16 videos were. And they're probably gonna be very inclined to follow. So we found that series work absolutely great for brands, specifically to be able to cultivate

a following as well. Another one is finding ways to actually engage with the community or of community engagement, which is essentially comment responses on TikTok. If you're not familiar with this feature, essentially whenever someone comments on one of your TikTok videos, you can simply press on the comment and it's gonna give you an option to make a video reply to it. We found that this is a great way to actually encourage other users to comment as well, simply because they are motivated and excited by the fact that, hey, maybe one of their favorite brands just

responded to one of their comments as a question. So it really makes them feel like they're being listened to. And of course, they are, right? - One sec. I got a couple questions on a whole bunch of this stuff. So first of all, trends-related content. - Yeah. - Talk to me a little bit because there seems to be a lot of trends going on TikTok, and how do you know which ones you should participate in and not participate in? What's your wisdom on that? - For sure. So trends obviously for people that aren't necessarily familiar

by what I mean by trends, essentially you can upload your own sounds or sometimes sounds on TikTok. They kind of act like a hashtag, as a filtration system. Right? So on the bottom right hand corner of the app UI, you can press on a little sort of disc and it's gonna take you to a sound. Typically you'll find that these sounds have quite a few videos made under that specific sound. Going back to it, it kind of acts like a hashtag system. And then based off of that, you can kind of see how people are

using this specific sound as a video template, right? So let's say for example, there's a lot of times it's an audio sync, a little bit of lip sync. It can be an actual song and then people kind of take it in a direction where they're either readapting the lyrics to the song and adding a text overlay to kind of change the significance of it with an added punchline. It's really hard to describe verbally. I wish I could actually provide- - No. I mean, I think I understand what you're saying. - Yeah. - We've covered trends

pretty extensively on this podcast, but the question is trends by its very nature. The word implies that there's a beginning, middle, and end to the trend, right? Because the trends don't last forever, right? So how do we know which trends we ought to tap into? You understand what I'm asking there? - Definitely. I would say that oftentimes trends do tend to have a lifespan or a shelf life, I guess you could say. So it's also about acting quick, right? I think trends more than anything, it's about being a student of the platform as well. And

see one of the things I do just to moderate my consumption with the app as well is just spend 15 dedicated minutes per day scrolling through TikTok very intentionally. Seeing what trending sounds are coming up within different accounts, right? The reason why I mention different accounts is because the algorithms actually gonna zero in on the type of content that you interact with and the type of content that you put out. So everyone's "for you page" is gonna be incredibly different. But going back to it, just being able to scroll consistently and be like, oh, I've

heard this sound like three times in the past 10 minutes, something's going on here, right? And you can actually click there on the actual button, bottom right hand corner of the spinning disc. And it's gonna tell you how many videos have actually been made under that specific sound as well. So that's kind of like what we mean by trends. The thing is timeliness of trends, they can be important, a 100%, when you use it because you can also rank on the trending sound. But I think it's more so understanding, okay, is there a tangible adaptation

of this sound, how it's being implemented, how it's being templated, that I can directly apply to my brand, right? Just because it's trending on TikTok, you shouldn't be forced to actually use it. It's more so can I find a witty, fun way to actually implement this to what I wanna describe or something that I wanna communicate about my brand? - Love that. Now on the series content, how does somebody know it's part of a series? Does it need to be scripted that way or do you need to put stuff on top of the screen? Or

how does someone who's watching this realize that there's more videos where that came from on this topic? - Yeah, so typically what we like to do is you can add text overlays onto your TikTok videos. So we'll have a title of the series, right? So let's say for example, we could... I'll give you an example. Like how to start a marketing podcast, part one, right? So every video within that series, we're gonna want you to use that same title, "How to start a marketing podcast part two, part three, part four, part five," etcetera, et cetera,

to try and highlight that there's some sort of lineage there. - When they go to your TikTok profile, is there some way to group all these together, or is it not that simple? - A 100%. TikTok has what's called playlists. So say for example, there's kind of like these rectangles right above your video content, you can name it anything that you want, and you can actually pop them all into that specific playlist. So it's all grouped together and people can just scroll accordingly as well. - And then you also mentioned your last type of content

pillar, was this community engagement, which is called community engagement, which is really video responses to comments. Is that right? Did I hear that right? So if we take this trends content and couple it with the series, and then we add in there the video responses to TikTok comments. Are those the main three pillars? And if so, how do we divide up? Should there be like, if this is a pie chart, should there be more of this versus that? What's your thoughts on that? - Yeah, so you're gonna wanna actually see what works best, right? Oftentimes

trends, I consider it to be what I like to call filler content, right? It actually allows you to remain consistent with your posting cadences, because the amount of effort that it takes to make a trend video is quite low, right? So it's actually great content to wrap into your overall content strategy, but I've seen brands rely on trends alone to carry their strategy. And I think it hurts them in the long run. So I do believe trends are important, not only because they're great filler content and they help you have a consistent cadence. But in

addition to that, it also shows TikTok and Gen Z as a generation. Like, oh, these people actually understand TikTok. There's a level of admiration for people that kind of adapt to the rules of the platform as well. So I do encourage trend-related content, but not a 100% of it. Now series-based videos, one thing I do wanna throw in there as well, I would recommend original content. It's very hard to describe what I mean by original content, but I want it to be something that's related to your product, whether it's a series-based, or this is how

you can implement my product, or it's just very contextual from brand to brand, right? So it's kind of hard to articulate in a sense, but that second pillar is really just more creative content that's pertaining specifically to the brand, or an ongoing series that can cultivate an audience, right? That's typically what that second pillar consists of. And then third pillar comment responses as well, again, just tying back into the community engagement, making your community felt like they're heard, Obviously that they are and they're appreciated as well. And the amount of excitement that can actually cause

one of your followers to have a comment response, it's quite cool. - So what I hear you saying then is the original content or the series-based content, that's probably gonna be the bulk of your content, is really what I'm hearing you say, right? - It should be, in my opinion. I think the other two pillars that I mentioned here, again, it's kind of supporting content. I'm gonna put it to you this way. Let's say for example, you're casting a net to find new audiences, right? That net is essentially gonna be that second content pillar that

we mentioned of original content and series-based videos. Why? Because it's a little bit more distinguishable, and it's a lot more likely to gain virality consistently, as opposed to a trend that's been done 50,000 times. Right? So it's kind of hard to differentiate yourself from the rest of the people there. So that's why I think that second pillar is the biggest focus, a 100%, because that's what's gonna actually bring in new audiences. The other two pillars are more so for nurturing your current audiences, because a lot of times, people get caught up in the numbers or

just like, "I want more followers. I want more followers," but they forget about their existing audiences as well. So I think having a balance of those three is incredibly important. - So let's say we've got our content pillars, if you will, what's the next thing we need to be focused on from a strategy perspective? - So this might sound a little bit excessive, but I highly suggest that people go into content scripting. When I started TikTok, I used to script all my videos, everything from verbatim, what I wanted to say line for line, when I

wanted the image overlay to be, what I wanted the text insert to be to compliment whatever I'm saying within the video. Everything was scripted to the T. And to people listening to this, you're gonna be like, "Damn, that sounds like work." And yeah, it is work obviously, but what that did for me more than anything, it gave me a lot of clarity when it came to actually recording videos. So it just makes it 10 times easier. And Michael, I'm sure you understand- - It doesn't sound complicated to say you wanna script a 15 or 30-second

video because you don't have a lot of time, right? I mean, don't you agree? If you don't script it, then you're just gonna end up frustrated because you're gonna waste a lot of time saying things that aren't important, am I right? - A 100%. And then you'll start catching yourself using filler words, like the uhms and the hmm. And you know what I mean? Especially on a platform like TikTok that you have to make sure that you're trying to retain people's attention from start to finish. You can't afford all those little brain farts, I guess

you could say. - So do you have any tips on how to script? - Yeah, so essentially I use Notion. And again, one of the reasons why I'm so grateful for scripting my own content is now we're actually able to script client content, and actually just send it to the creators so that we're in perfect alignment on what we actually want to produce within the content and within the video, right? So again, it just goes back to- - What is Notion for those that haven't used Notion? - Oh, okay. Notion is... How do I describe

Notion? It's like my second brain basically. I have everything from business to personal life, to grocery list, everything. But essentially- - Sounds like Evernote or something like that, or do you know what Evernote is? - Kind of yeah. Notion essentially allows you to... It's almost like a mix of a no code platform as well. It's amazing. I love Notion. I can't speak highly enough about it. But basically we use it as a visual organizer, kind of like a combination between Google Docs and almost Google Drive at times as well for client profiles and anything really.

But again, you can use a Google Doc if you'd like, or Word, if you're still into that. But definitely recommend Notion. - Yeah, so what are the elements of scripting that... I mean, when you're putting together a TikTok, what are the basic things we need to be thinking about that we make sure we include when we're scripting? - Yeah. So two things. Number one is obviously if it's more of a verbal video, make sure that you have at least a rough outline of what you wanna say line for line, scene for scene. If you wanna

pair it with sort of a visual element as well, make sure to include that. One of the things that we do, we're very specific with if we want a specific sound being used within the TikTok, we'll go ahead and title the video, link out the sound directly to the TikTok sound that we want used. And then under it, we have sort of a scripting key. So anything within brackets essentially means this is what we want as a text overlay within the TikTok. Anything within quotations means this is what you're supposed to say verbally within the

TikTok. Anything within parenthesis... No, I'm sorry. Wait, what's the round one? - Yeah. That's parenthesis. - Okay. It's parenthesis. Okay. Okay. Anything within parent- - Now you've got me doubting myself. Yeah. - It is parentheses. A 100%. - yeah, I guess you're right. - Yeah. - Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anything within parenthesis is just sort of a side note either for myself or the creator on how we want them to interact within that specific video. So it's like body language cues, verbal cues, tonalities, et cetera, et cetera. - Wow, I love that. - So we kind

of have that key in place to make it a little bit more streamlined, and so everyone's on the same page. If you wanna include a specific TikTok effect, like green screen or anything like that, you can also paste the link. We have sort of an internal database with all these different effects and trending sounds as well to just go ahead and paste it and have it right on there so the creator has easy access to it as well. - I mean, this sounds really cool. I would imagine this is something that they could just print

out and tape on the wall if they really wanted to, right? Where they've got their phone in front of them so that they can just remember the script or something, or how do they... Or they memorize the scripts, or what do they do when it comes to the actual... Or do they just record them in little tiny bits so that they don't have to memorize anything and they can just look at it real quick? - Yeah, so a lot of times it depends on the creator's sort of creation cadences, but a lot of times what

they'll do is kind of just hop back between the app and the app... The Notion app and TikTok when they're actually recording and see line for line, okay, recorded the first line, stop recording. What's the next line? Record the next line, stop recording, et cetera, et cetera. So it's kind of just a back and forth thing. - Does TikTok make it easy for you to retake stuff if you don't like the way it sounded? You understand? Maybe you've just done these in different sections and you realize that you made a mistake on the very beginning.

Do you have to start all over again or does it make it easy to do that? And if not, is there some other app? And maybe I'm getting into your next pillar. I probably am. Or your next strategy. So let's talk about that. - Yeah, for sure. Look, I think the TikTok UI in general for content creation purposes is incredibly intuitive. Like anything in life, it might seem daunting for the first 15 minutes, but I promise you, once you record five videos, you're like, oh my God, this is easy peasy. So yeah, basically once you

record, if you are recording an actual clips, you can go ahead, go back, select the clip. It's like, ah, maybe that lasted seven seconds. You can go ahead and rerecord that specific clip or just delete it all together. So yeah, definitely allows for that. That being said- - Yeah. Go ahead because I know you've got another... You've got... I'm getting ahead of myself. So keep going. - Yeah, that being said, I do highly suggest everyone check out an app called CapCut. CapCut is actually owned by ByteDance, which is TikTok's parent company. And it's absolutely amazing

for all of this. The reason why I actually suggest you to record off platform is it makes your life so much easier for repurposing content as well. But yeah, CapCut essentially has everything that TikTok has in terms of editing, but times 10. It's like on steroids. - Now when you say record off platform, what do you mean exactly? You mean using CapCut? - Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because CapCut still has the camera feature that allows you to actually use the same effects that TikTok has for the vast majority of them, especially the big ones like

green screen, all those fun ones that you see consistently on the app. There are a few that might not actually be on there, but the basic ones, yes. A 100%, they'll be there. And on top of that, you don't actually have to use eight party website or some sort of software to extract your actual TikTok videos after you upload it without the TikTok watermark, right? So it just makes it a little bit more seamless for redistribution on other platforms as well. - So just so we're clear, CapCut is an app that's owned by the parent

company of TikTok. And you can use that and it's got more features than the TikTok app itself has, and you can export out of this and then you could upload it into TikTok. Is that what I'm hearing you say? But you could also upload it into stories. I mean, not just... I mean, what do they call them on YouTube? You can upload them to the YouTube equivalent of Reels, and you can upload them into Instagram. Is that correct? I mean, without any watermarks on them. - Yeah, A 100%. It's essentially just like a video editing

app where you can export it. Raw file, no watermarks, and obviously upload to the platform of your preference. - Okay. So far it's YouTube Shorts. I couldn't believe I couldn't remember the name of it. So far we've talked about three parts to your strategy, identifying the content pillars, content scripting. And then we kind of went into the content creation side of it fluidly. What's the next part of your strategy? - Yeah, so establishing posting frequency I think, is very important and it's not necessarily something that... It is something people talk about, but there's a lot

of misinformation on the subject, right? A lot of times you'll actually hear people on TikTok say, "Oh, you have to be posting five to 10 times a day," which I think is absolutely nuts. I don't know who has the time to actually upload five to 10 times per day. But that being said, I think you actually have to establish cadences that fit with your lifestyle, that help you maintain quality and quantity of your actual work. Now, the only exception that I will make there is, say, for example, you're brand new to the platform and you

are just trying to get a feel for your content creation practices, right? Your first video is probably gonna suck. Let's be honest, right? Everyone's first video was just hot garbage. But that being said, the more reps that you put in, the better off that you're actually gonna be in the long run. You're gonna be creating a lot better content over time. So I do encourage people to not limit themselves in the amount of times that they post, but I'd much rather you be consistent. Let's say for example, you can only post five times a week.

Awesome. Just be consistent five times a week for an entire year, instead of posting 10 times a day for one month, right? I think that that's a lot more impactful and it's gonna be a habit that actually draws results in the long run as well. - Is there any scheduling apps that work with TikTok so you can batch them all in a day, and then schedule them out that you're aware of? - Yeah, so if you upload directly through the TikTok website, I know some accounts have the feature to actually schedule your post only directly

through TikTok's website. And I believe later.com recently rolled out the ability to auto publish directly from their software. I think later might be. I'm not sponsored by the way, but hey, maybe they should. I think Later you can actually repurpose any other platform. So if you are into sort time optimization, go ahead and take your piece of content that you made from CapCut directly, that raw file, upload it to later and go ahead and distribute it to all the platforms all at once. - I wanna go back a little bit to content creation, because I've

got a bunch more questions related to creation of actual content. First of all, obviously the frequency is gonna play into all this, but it sounds like for your clients, you're recommending that you're publishing every day or every weekday. Is that generally what you're doing for a lot of your clients? - Yeah, it depends. We either have five times a week or seven times per week, depending on their packages and their priorities, what they want to achieve. - Now, when it comes to the actual creation, obviously we know about the CapCut app. That is a tongue

twister right there. As far as the actual tips for creating content, I mean, there's just so much possibilities, right? We've already talked about how trends-based content is very easy to create because you're modeling after some other people that have already done stuff, right? But when you're creating original content, it sounds like it's almost like a blank slate as far as the way that you could create content. So what are some tips that you would give to those that are listening who want to create content as far as making it interesting? I'm sure there's a bunch

of them inside your mind. Where do you wanna start? Because I would love to hear some ideas as far as actual creation of content. - For sure. First thing, I'm actually gonna leave y'all homework. I want you to go to Amazon and look up a book called "Steal Like an Artist" by Austin Kleon. I think it's one of the most phenomenal books ever written and there's a lot of truth behind it, right? There's this concept that everything is a remix. If you think back to our early days, everything had to come from a specific idea,

but it's just one thing being tacked onto the next. And maybe it's a different delivery. Maybe it's different context. Maybe it's a different example. So first read that book. It's a really short read. You can knock it out probably even in one sitting. No excuses there. Number two, I want you to follow. If you're a personal brand, go out and find five or 10 people in your specific industry that you admire maybe their content delivery, how they speak, their editing, et cetera, et cetera, right? Take into considerations like your capability, your bandwidth to actually create

similar content like that. But go ahead and actually see how they communicate with their audience. What's their setting? What's their pace? What's their tonality? What are they actually talking about? Scroll through their most successful videos. Why did this specific video get a million views? Why did this one only get 10K views, right? Try and figure out, study the game. See what's actually working for them. Based off of those five or 10 different individuals that you admire, respect, and look up to, find ways to actually adapt what's worked best for them. And again, this can apply

for brands as well. It doesn't necessarily only have to be individuals. Whether it's brands or personal brands, I guess we could call them, find what's worked for them, what you admire about it, and then see once you actually created your actual content pillars, see how you can readapt what's worked for them with your own language, with your own thoughts, with your own form of communication, with your own personality, with your own delivery, right? I think that that's such a great starting point for people, simply because I feel like by nature, we learn best by seeing,

as opposed to just directly jumping into it without having a visual guideline or a reference point or an idea to actually follow. - I like this a lot. And I would imagine there's just a massive pool of possibilities and new things being born every minute. I mean, if you're super good with video work, I would imagine you could get exceptionally creative with your camera angles and whether or not you're shooting them on your phone or you're shooting them on a digital SLR camera, or whether you're like face is right up in the middle of everything

versus your face isn't in at all. I mean, are you finding that people tend to see the ones with the faces tend to outperform the ones with just the voices? - It really depends. It really depends on your actual storytelling, the context within the actual video. Are you talking from a personal experience? If you're talking about a personal experience, then yes, I would recommend that you're actually in the actual video. Funny enough, Michael, I never actually showed my face in my videos up until I had 25K followers. - Really? - So there's definitely way- Yeah,

there's definitely different ways of storytelling and communicating things. Sometimes you can be more of a visual storyteller, right? So you find clips or different ways to actually tell the story with you just narrating it. There's so many different ways and that's why I think it's important to see what other creators are doing. And again, they don't always have to be in the same vertical. They can be different verticals, but you admire their content delivery, their storytelling, how they're actually sequencing different scenes within their content for it to have a compelling storyline as well. Like the

hook, maybe it comes with a little drop, some sort of negative or a pain point. And then they bring you through a story, a resolution, a call to action, see how they're actually sequencing it. And you'll actually be able to learn a lot. But again, I think by now you're kind of understanding that I kind of view content more so as I study it, I don't consume it. I study content and I think everyone has to put on their kind of study hat in order to reframe the way that they actually think and consume content.

- There's a lot of people listening right now who work for a business that they don't own, and they may not want to be the face or the voice of the TikTok videos. And this is potentially a struggle for them because maybe there's no one inside the company who they feel comfortable putting their face or their voice on TikTok. And I know that's part of the reason why people come to your business. But how do we decide which person is going to be the voice or person's the voice or face of our company? Because this

is kind of a struggle, I would imagine, for certain brands that don't feel like they have anybody inside the company that actually knows how to do this. And now they've got to rely on someone else's voice and face to represent their brands. Do you have any wisdom as far as how to make decisions on who to have as their face or their voice? - Yeah, this one's actually really tricky and it's still something that's kind of like a speed bump within the business as well, because different brands prioritize different things, right? Some brands really, really

want to emphasize sort of diverse figures within their content. Some brands want to be more sort of... How do I say? They want to actually adapt a certain content style over another one. So you actually have to see, okay, this creator might be better at trend-related content, but they might not necessarily be great at vocal content or storytelling content. So it's really important to kind of pre-strategize and understand, okay, what does kind of my creator persona look like? And then based off of that, you can actually go into scouting. There are big brands out there

that make a name for themselves having no front face creator. Off the top of my head, like a Ryanair, Duolingo. I was about to call it Dua Lipa. Duo lingo. There's a couple others out there that they have either mascot or they leverage a feature within the app called Green Screen with eyes and mouth, which essentially just pops up big eyes and a big mouth onto whatever image. And that's sort of like a witty play on the platform. But here's the thing, all those brands that I mentioned, again, like a Duolingo or Ryanair, they're world

renowned brands already, right? They already have that brand awareness. They already have that brand recognition. It's a lot harder for a actual brand to just get into the game with that same strategy without anyone really knowing about them. One last thing I'll kind of leave you with is if you are a smaller brand, or say for example, you are the founder of your brand, that's a huge asset as well. A lot of people really, really enjoy seeing the ins and outs of why, how, what brought you to actually start the business. There's a certain relatability

factor to that. And I think people really cheering for the underdogs, especially if you can be very visual and build in public about how you create your brand. So again, I don't think that there's a one-size-fits-all solution for these brands specifically. It's more so assessing the state of your business, what you value, what you prioritize, building that avatar or persona, and then based off of your resources, what's the best point of action. What route you can actually take there. Again, I wish I could give you a straight answer, but- - No, I mean, that was

super helpful. So, all right. I believe you have one more part of your strategy, right? Which is repurposing. So let's talk about that a little bit, because we've been hinting about that all along. So let's say we've got some great content. What do we need to do to take advantage of it on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels and anywhere else that happens to adapt short form repeating video? - For sure. Over time, you'll actually discover that these different platforms have different languages and how they actually consume content, what's kind of like their standard for content.

So it's different from platform to platform. Now, what I will say is if you have the content, just go ahead and pop it up on another platform. Why not? You already created it. You already paid for it. You already invested the time, whatever it might be. Do yourself the favor and repurpose that content onto other platforms. I think that's pretty straightforward, but what I want to kind of touch on as well is helping people understand, especially those people that we mentioned at first that are new to TikTok and they kind of feel like, "Oh man,

another platform that I have to actually dive into," I feel like that's a huge barrier of resistance, right? If that sounds like you, then I want to encourage you to think about, don't even call it TikTok if TikTok gives you a little bit of an ick. Just go ahead and call it short form content. Right? Go ahead and start thinking about your content strategy in terms of short form content. And then based off of that, you can actually put a redistribution plan in place to be able to touch on basically all these other platforms as

well. - Well, I would imagine that CapCut app you talked about would be a great app to be using, even if you aren't on TikTok yet. I mean, if you're all over Reels, is there any reason you couldn't create the content in CapCut and then eventually start using it in Reels? And if it ticks off in Reels, then maybe there's a reason to go ahead and start a TikTok account, right? - Yeah. A 100%. I just choose CapCut, again, because of its sort of similarities to TikTok, but you can definitely create Reels content. Again, I

don't even wanna call it... Let's be content... I'm sorry, platform agnostic here, and just call it short form content. I definitely do encourage people to create short form content on CapCut. - Gerardo Perez, if people want to reach out to you, what's your preferred social platform and what website would you wanna send them to? - Yeah, so all my social media is gonna be @TheGerardoPerez. So you can find me on Instagram and TikTok primarily. I'll start dabbling a little bit more with Twitter as the weeks go on. LinkedIn, Gerardo Perez as well, trying to be

a little bit more active there. And the company website is gonna be www.marketing-and.com. One last thing I actually want to tell you guys as well, if you do visit either my TikTok or my Instagram, under the link in bio, I have a free resource for you guys, which is essentially our trending sound list. This is a list that we've created over the past almost like eight months now of every trending sound that we found on the platform that brands can actually use. I mentioned that because brands, when you actually register for a business account, you

have a limited music library because of licensing. So any sound that's on that list, you'll actually be able to just link out and create a video directly from there. So definitely check that out. - Sweet. And you said it was The Gerardo Perez on most social platforms, is that correct? - All of them. Yeah. - Okay. Cool. Gerardo, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. We're way better because of it. Really appreciate your time today. - No, Michael, thank you.