TikTok Storytelling: How to Stand Out From the Crowd

- There's this thing that happens on TikTok, where you really only need to have one video that goes viral, and then overnight they have 10,000 new customers. (gentle music) - Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Michael Sanchez. If you don't know who he is, he's a TikTok marketing strategist who specializes in helping consumer focus brands increase their reach and exposure on TikTok. His podcast is called Talk the Tok, And his talk audit tool tracks and analyzes any TikTok profile at talktools.com. That's a lot of talks and a lot of ticks. (laughs) Welcome to

the show, Michael. (laughs) - Thank you so much. That was a bit of a tongue twist. - I tried really hard not to screw that up, okay? - I appreciate you going through that little ver, maybe I gotta adjust that in the future. - It's all good, it's all good. So today, Michael and I are gonna talk about storytelling on TikTok and really how to stand out from the crowd, because there's so much happening on TikTok. My first question, Michael is about TikTok and marketers. There's a lot of people watching and listening that are not

yet on TikTok, either they feel like they're too late or they feel like it's maybe just not for them. Why should they consider TikTok? What do you wanna say to those people? - That's a really good question. I think one thing that I think is a little bit funniest. If you're not on TikTok yet, you probably are to some extent, all the other platforms are building around short form video. You got Reels, you got YouTube Shorts, you got Pinterest pin ideas, you got Facebook Stories or no Facebook Worlds I should say, where you're probably already

consuming the content you don't really know, or you're already creating content that's kind of like TikTok, but it's not specific to TikTok. But to the real question, the first thing I would say, It's the only place that you're gonna get this massive organic reach to a totally new audience that you've likely never reached before, or you probably won't ever reach before on all the other platforms. TikToks built a little bit different in terms of finding new audiences, new people that maybe would love to hear what you have to say versus on Instagram, they might kind

of put you into this little subsection. So one, first thing is you're gonna get this massive reach, New people, new customers, new clients for yourself or forever your clients are that you're working with. The other thing I would say is there's this thing that happens on TikTok, where you really only need to have one video that goes viral and literally your life and business can change and explode overnight in some massive way. And I know that sounds like I'm overselling or I'm over promising, but this doesn't happen every so often. Like this happens hundreds and

thousands of times a day. You probably have already seen it on news articles, You've seen it on Facebook, Instagram. You've seen it on TikTok where they have one video that hits the right audience at the right time, and then overnight they have 10,000 new customers and their business went from being small mom pop shop to something massive and huge. So second one is you only need that one video and it could be this catalyst for everything that you've been hoping for or wanting, grinding on Instagram for 10 years, you do one TikTok video and then

boom, you explode all of a sudden. I think one, for the audience, maybe because I know there's a lot of marketers and business owners, a lot of the advertisers I'm talking to, a lot of the marketing agencies and a lot of the brands, a lot of their budget allocation has shifted from there's traditional platforms, like say Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube and they started to allocate a massive amount of money towards TikTok, whether that's influencer deals, advertisements, whatever might be. So whether you're going to do it or not, The industry seems to be shifting and be

like, hey, let's start to pay attention a little bit more over here on TikTok and a little bit less on Facebook or Instagram, et cetera. Either they're bad, but TikTok is this new thing that everybody's on. Another aspect I would say really quickly too, is that kind of what I talked about in the beginning is that all these other platforms are building for short form video. They're all copying or stealing from the playbook at TikTok. So whether you wanna do it on TikTok or not, You're going to have to eventually start building into your strategy,

TikTok-ish type of content or strategy. So if you get master TikTok, you more or less can master all the other ones because TikTok is that top, top dog, and then everything below it kind of filters downwards. So if you're good at TikTok, almost by default, you're gonna crush it on Reels, YouTube Shorts, et cetera, cetera. And maybe the last part is most people have fun on TikTok. I think there's been this dynamic that shifted and changed on social media and marketing, Where there's a lot of people that have their hands in it, VAs and assistants,

et cetera, where they've kind of lost that ability to get into like their actual customer's minds and get into them. So I think at a very simple sense, it's fun. A lot of people are finding that's more authentic to them. And more importantly, their customers actually feel like they're connecting in a different way versus their Facebook and YouTube stuff. So if you want to go look at a brand on Facebook and look at a brand on TikTok, You'll see totally different things. And one feels a little bit more deeper. It feels more connected. - We

also have, first of all, Facebook has acknowledge that TikTok is a formable competitor. And for sure is stealing, if you will time and mind share. I don't know what the stats are. You probably know some of 'em off the top of your head, but it's a massive. If I'm not mistaken, didn't TikTok actually outpace Google For the number one destination on the web. Do you know that? - Yep. - Is that true? - Yeah, most traffic source type that comes from a CloudFlare, they said more hits for TikTok than on Google. And that was the

first time I think, ever in history of, since Google launched, so. - That's huge, right? - It's pretty massive. Same thing with total watch time session. I think now it's at 112 minutes per session, Meaning you open up the app, you stay for 112 minutes. - Okay, that's crazy. Okay, can we just say that, can we acknowledge that that's nuts because how long is the average TikTok these days? - 15 Seconds, maybe on average. I mean, it varies between eight and 15. Let's just say 15. - You're watching, that's 100 of these basically in a

session. That's nuts, right? - Yeah, I was telling this funny kind of story This might be later on, we could talk about it, but I seen this content of this one woman who was really funny. And I was watching her talk about how to churn butter, super random, but then when I looked at it, I was like, I just watched 27 of her videos in a row. I literally counted. And I was like, I just spent like 12 to 15 minutes on this lady's profile, which I'm not paying attention to 15 here, a minute there,

30 seconds there, but at the end of the day, you're like, wow, I just listened to Michael Stelzner For 30 minutes on TikTok. So yeah, pretty fascinating. - Well, and to be honest, you won't find me on TikTok 'cause I'm not there yet, but I'm sure someday I'll be there. So for everybody else, who's already like sold on TikTok and maybe for those that are still not sold on TikTok, let's talk about what's changed because there's been some innovations, right? And there's been some things that maybe we need to know as marketers, right? Like maybe

what we've been told a couple years ago of here's how you do TikTok and the way it is today might not be the same. So what do you wanna tell us about from your perspective, what has changed in the last few years when it comes to TikTok? - Yeah, I mean, I think the most obvious one is everyone started to finally pay attention to the power of TikTok and are actually now focusing time, attention and energy towards this new platform, which for a lot of us, like it's not new, but for maybe people that are

listening right now, It's new to you because you just jumped on. So I think the biggest one is that their big players have now been like, okay, it's not just a kid's dancing app. We can actually go on there and activate. And then they go look at their actual, the return on investment, like, oh my God, if we sold more products on TikTok than all of our other channels combined, which is really, really interesting and fascinating. So the most obvious one is people actually jump on it. I think more and more people because they jumped

on it, Competitions heating up. And so because of that, one of the first things I would say is that quality is far more important these days than quantity. And when I say quality, I don't mean just video quality. I say about about quantity in the sense of is a topic or subject something that your audience even cares about? Did you actually spend time to be like, what is something about Instagram that's different and unique that my audience wants to hear versus let me talk about followers. Like that's not quality. Quality is like the intent. Quality

in terms of audio, the video editing, the pacing of your storytelling, the copywriting that you put into it, the framing, the subject matter. That to me is what I'm talking about when I mean quality. Something that's going to take it to that next level, that next echelon. And full disclosure or disclaimer, I guess you could say is like quantity is important, but I think quantity is only important once you understand That the quality is good, the audience likes it, then you can scale it up versus you spending three hours putting out 30 videos. And 29

of them are just really bad versus two videos that are really good. Two versus one is obviously better. The other thing I would say that really changed in a really big way is Facebook for the advertising division of aspects of things got pit pretty bad with the iOS changes. So a lot of advertisers have started to shift their advertising budget And their creation process the way they market their businesses from Facebook to a massive shift over to TikTok ads. So you kind of take note of that all of a sudden you're like, okay, if the

advertisers are over there now or just spending more time and money and energy over there, there's probably gonna be a shift in way content's created or marketed or developed or consumed as stuff like that. So the biggest one I would say too, is just the ads platform in general has gotten better. It's gotten more robust. Since the last time we talked was like, I think last time we talked, Trump was threatened to shut down TikTok two, three years ago. So quite a lot's changed in the ads platform dynamic of things over there. I think one

really important thing that I don't think people touch on too much is trying to find a unique angle that makes you stand out and makes you different from the crowd. So here's a fun little exercise you can do. Go to TikTok, go to Search, Type in something like manifestation coaching, for example, and no offense to anybody who does that and not demonizing it. But if you look and you scroll through the top videos, they all kind of look the same, they all kind of say the same subjects, they have the same lighting, the same headshot,

they're in the same, like kind of white wall background. It's not bad, but if you were just outside with like grass behind you, just that little tiny sort of change, It looks slightly different, but it makes you stand out in such a massive way. So I would say maybe one of the bigger changes, and I don't think this is just specific to TikTok. I think this is every platform is trying to find what makes you different and unique. If you're a marketer, if you're a local business, don't just try to copy everybody else. Maybe take

some inspiration, but maybe you do it in a slightly different way. Doesn't need to be big, but slightly different unique angle or different way of bringing the content to them Where now you just stand out. It's so simple. I told someone to go stand by a tree 'cause she does like manifestation coaching and she talks about like yoga and stuff like that. And it worked and she does yoga outside now and now her videos are going viral and it's like, yeah, there's a sunset, there's a beautiful view in her backyard. It looks beautiful versus just

seeing someone in the studio, no offense at all, you know anybody who does that, But it's not as different as unique in terms of just standing out. So yeah, things that have changed, I think the trying to find a way to approach it, that's different versus being like the other 50,000 people who might be in your niche doing the exact same thing, same way, et cetera. I think that's like a really, really big change in terms of just everything going on. - Just a real quick thought on that before we go to your last thing,

I definitely see the same thing happening Over on YouTube, right? So in the early days of YouTube, it was like, just get a video out there and publish as many as you want. Now it's more about no, actually don't publish tons, publish just really good ones, right? And those really good ones, the algorithm will on YouTube find your audience, right? And I'm guessing that that's exactly what's going on with TikTok right now, would you agree? - Yeah, 100%. I mean you still wanna keep it organic, you still wanna keep it natural. I think that's the

beauty of TikTok is that it looks like it's just a regular person talking to you to some extent, but I think there's always that little competitive edge that everybody's trying to get. So me versus Bob, if I have a really good microphone audio where you can hear me really good, it's not a huge change, but that versus Bob who has a lot of background noise and it's kind of chaotic. I'm just gonna win a little bit more. And you see that on every platform, Like you said, YouTube, you could just use your cell phone. Now,

if you wanna create a really good YouTube channel, you can do that, but there's a certain level of cover image and quality and audio and video and stuff like that that's important. And the last thing that I would say that maybe is a really big change, not so much a change, but really is, is hashtags. I think a lot of people still focus on hashtags. I'll say this very bluntly. They don't matter. They're not as important as maybe you're being led to believe or you think it would be. Maybe we can go down that line

later on if there's time. But if you just, from a very three simple standpoint. One, nobody consumes content on TikTok via hashtags. No one's looking up hashtag cooking at home and watching content for an hour. No one even consumes it, and don't believe me, ask anybody who watches TikTok ask 'em, hey, how much time you spend on TikTok on hashtags? Nobody. Two, when you go viral on TikTok and you look at your data, it never comes from hashtags. It's always from the four you feed, which is the whole point of TikTok, 'cause they show it

to a whole new audience. So even when you do go viral and you have success, it doesn't even come from hashtags, and three, the most blunt one is TikTok doesn't need your hashtag to tell them that there's a dog and that it's meant for this person and this location. Like the machine learning the algorithms on there Are so incredibly sophisticated. They don't really need your hashtag. So what I would suggest is really try to use that really small prime real estate for something that's gonna get a better story or pull people in more kind of

like Twitter. You only got so many characters for your tweet. Do you really wanna spend half your tweet putting a bunch of hashtags in it or do you want to do something that's gonna really be more interesting and more compelling to even watch And to click and to share et cetera, so. Maybe focus a lot less on hashtags and focus more on keywords, focus more on storytelling in the caption, more on copywriting. That's gonna actually make your video go viral versus know happy, ha ha ha, and there's a bunch of hashtags versus my dog just

brought me this and surprised me, oh my God, I don't, you can't even understand how happy I am. Like what are those two is gonna be a little more interesting to read And to watch and to be found on search. So yeah, last thing I would say is hashtags. They're not as important as maybe you're being led to believe or maybe you think they are just because of the other platforms you've been on in the past and what you're used to. - Awesome. Really, really good stuff. You mentioned storytelling there a few seconds ago and

why is storytelling so important on TikTok? I kind of think I intuitively understand The power of storytelling, but it seems that that's hard to do in such a short little video, but kind of explain to everybody why this is critical. Let's just kind of wrap our brain around that a little bit. - Yeah, I mean, I think specifically for marketers and businesses that are listening right now, I think everybody who comes on a TikTok from more of that business standpoint, they're focused on trying to sell themselves, their info, their product. And because of that, so

many people that do this practice are missing out on the core part of what it really just means to be a human, which is like how to communicate. And that's usually through stories. So stories have obviously been around since the beginning of civilization, it's the way in which we consume and communicate through emotions and ideas, et cetera. So I think a lot of times people on TikTok again, will talk about more the products And their benefits and features. I would say stop and start talking more about the ideal audience's problems and why their problems keep

reoccurring, why they need to fix it, and more importantly, how to actually solve that problem and the way to solve that is through your product or through your service. So maybe think about more of like how to tell a story around the pain point that's your average customer's facing in terms of the product itself and then guide them through it. So instead of being like, here's the best thing right here, you should totally buy this phone. It has a camera, blah, blah. It's more of like, I always miss out on my family's birthdays, the lighting

always sucks and I needed to find a really good way because my husband always makes fun of me. And I found this camera. Like that's way more interesting and way more compelling. And again, you don't have to believe me, like, just go look up whatever your niche is. Look at the top videos and really dissect their content. Like don't look at it from, is this make me laugh or whatever, but more of like a scientist, like what are they saying? How are they structuring the content? And most of the time, especially for businesses and products,

it's wrapped around some stories, some notion. So 'cause I mean the whole little adage of in the end, people don't remember what you said, they make you feel what this. - They remember how you made 'em feel. Yeah. - Yeah, exactly, more or less, yeah. Especially in to your earlier about TikTok, you see so many videos nonstop over and over and over again. Ask yourself, how many of those videos do you actually remember? Let's say you watch an average of 100, which ones stuck out to you? They always are hitting emotion, they're always telling you

a story. Something that's easy to digest. I've seen this little stat that was about 5% of the we intake in a day Is actually retained in our brain. So 100, what do we say? 112 minutes on TikTok a day, like 5% of that. Like who's gonna stand out? You with a really good story or just somebody throwing out facts at you, like here's the best camera, it has a 20% increase in. It's like, oh, I don't know. But tell me like, oh you will capture that amazing moment with your child. Maybe like a good example

of this real quick that I could do is let's pretend there's a video That you're seeing on TikTok and let's pretend there's no caption. And let's say three guys bullying an old man. There's nothing there. It's kind of boring, it's kind of playing. You don't know what's happening, but let's say all of a sudden I change a caption to, hey, this man was, these guys are helping me and they're defending me against this person. Now all of a sudden you're kind of intrigued, you're interested. Or if I change that story all of a sudden to,

These three guys are bullying this old man, someone please help me. Like those are all different stories, but two of those are gonna stand out versus just a vague open interpretation, which I know that's probably like a bad example. It's kind of negative, but those things are gonna stand out because it's wrapped around a story and an idea versus just putting out a video and hoping that people actually resonate with it to some extent. - I think about story and I think about 15 seconds, But I also, if I'm not mistaken, TikTok keeps lengthening how

long they're allowing these TikTok videos to be in. I don't know if it's true, but I heard rumors that they're thinking about going beyond three minutes even do you know, what's the latest on the street on how long these TikTok videos are gonna be? 'Cause the longer the video, the more you can even tell a story I would imagine, right? - Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it takes a certain skillset To hold someone for three minutes versus obviously 13 seconds. But yeah, three minutes already rolled out. As of currently five minutes is already being

beta tested in a bunch of different countries, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and I think Argentina. I might get that one wrong, but yeah, five minutes already being beta tested, 10 minutes is also being beta tested. And I think Indonesia in Singapore. So it's already happening And full disclosure little heads up. You could do hour long videos on Douyin, which is the sister app of TikTok in mainland China where TikTok comes from. So this idea of just short from video, like it's not going to stay short form, and we've already seen this. Like, I mean, Michael,

you probably know this, like YouTube always had a short form and only until like the last decade or five, six years that it opened up to what it is now. But I think at max maybe five or six years ago, I think it was like 15 minutes or 30 minutes, and now you could do, I think 24 hours I think. - It was 10 minutes. I think there was a limit on it at one point or something like, but yeah, now you can go for a lot, much longer. And I can imagine with the live

video component of TikTok, right? If maybe they'll eventually allow you to save that full live, which I don't know if there's a restrict, how long can you go live for it, you know? - There's different ways that you can go live now. So you can go live for up to two hours, but then there's again beta testing where I think the last time I seen someone went live for like seven days or something like that. - What? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of crazy. But again, like that's one thing that maybe you should

know about TikTok, 'cause they're always testing things. They move very, very quickly. So you might see a feature and then it just goes away because it got their data or you might see a feature just fully rolled out of nowhere and you're like, wait, what? It like you guys didn't even announce this. It just came outta nowhere. But yeah, and like maybe even just thinking about it from a different perspective too. It's not even so much that they're prepping us for long form in the terms of video, like 30 seconds to three minutes to five

minutes, they have the ability now to have playlists Where you can actually create a playlist attached to a video. So you could put a us together of like all my cooking videos or all my how to make a drink video and people are consuming the playlist now. You're not realizing it, but when you watch a playlist, you're probably sitting there for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 'cause you're just going back to back to back. It's conditioning us to be okay and accept the idea of like, okay, I don't mind watching Michael Stelzner and the

social media podcast. Like I don't mind. It's really, really good because they prepped us for that. So when they launch that 15 minute video, doesn't feel so foreign. And again, this isn't some new mind boggling thing. Like it's the same playbook that YouTube's done. - Yeah, like these same people on TikTok are going over to YouTube and watching 20 minute, 30 minute videos, right? So let's be honest, like their competition to YouTube too. So you know they're eventually Gonna remove the limit, right? And they'll probably have shorts and they'll have longs and they'll have, who

knows what they're gonna call 'em. Getting back to the storytelling, tell us a little bit about, from the very beginning you were telling us one of the things that we as marketers need to be thinking about when we do TikTok is we're competing against a lot of other creators, right? And storytelling, it sounds to me is the differentiator, right? If you can create a great story. So what ought we pay attention to when we are stories for TikTok? Talk to me about, what do we need to know? - That's a really good question. I think

so many times people jumping on TikTok are trying to do kind of like the growth hacky, kind of like quick win type of things. Like the best caption, the best hashtags, the best, whatever. But I think so many people felt or realized there's so many simple things that you can do that we're just used to, That would get you so much of exponential growth or a win. So for example, when it comes to storytelling, think about what is the copy? What are you saying verbally? How are you structuring it? What's your body language look like?

If I was in your room right now or wherever you're sitting at and you see me in the corner room crawled up in a ball and you're like, oh, what's wrong, Michael? I'm like, oh, I'm totally fine. There's this connection in your brain that's like, No you're not, your body language is telegraphing something totally different. So body language, facial expressions, if you're talking on camera, I think a lot of business owners do this in no offense, but they're trying to memorize all their lines in their head and their face looks very like dull. You know

what I mean? Like they're saying like, I am so excited to tell you this and their face has no facial expression. It's like, we pick up on that. Like it's just, it's innate into our bodies. Same thing with like tonality place in setting the energy on camera if I'm like, I'm so excited that I'm on this pot. Like you could tell, even if you're not watching video, it's like, no, you're not like you sound like you're just bored out your mind. So the first thing I would say in terms of good storytelling aspects and these

like easy things you could do is really stop trying to be clever and be more human. You know, good copy can help you stand out. Good facial expressions can help you connect With the audience even deeper. Good body language can help you build more trust. Good tonality can pull you in, pull the audience in and good energy can help create a better piece of content where if you sound and you look excited, I'm gonna be excited, it's just infectious. Like when someone laughs and the whole room starts laughing, it's just like, oh, I gotta laugh.

I don't know why I'm laughing, but it's part of the energy. - Yeah, let me ask a couple. I wanna dig in on deep, deep on some of this stuff. So first of all, anybody who's ever been on an airplane, You know, you've got the airline steward is tired and likely exhausted or steward, right, or whatever they call 'em. But they bring a certain amount of energy 'cause they want to greet you and they want to make you feel good, right? So there is some sort of signaling that happens. And I would imagine I've seen

enough TikTok videos, the people that have a lot of excitement and energy in their videos, it gets almost transferred over to the recipient they feel good, right? And TikTok wants you to feel something, right? Don't they? So that energy, like what tips do you have? How can we, I mean maybe some people, is there a certain time of the day we ought to record these TikTok? Is there certain things we ought to do to get ourselves in the right mindset so that we have that energy, that excitement? - That's a good, good question. Yeah, I

think maybe like, something that's not often talked about, I was like getting in that good flow state or that good energy state. So I was talking to someone recently and they were talking about their content is more about mental health and they were talking about things that are a little bit more on the sad side, but they're like, I'm not there anymore. Like I don't want to go there. I don't know how to go there 'cause my life is so much better than when it was 10 years ago. And so one thing I said is

maybe create kind of like This playlist of some sort put a song on that gets you back in the emotional state. Start to think about memories that ring you back to that thing. If you're a business owner, talking about struggling to get out 9:00 to 5:00. If you're a multi-millionaire, it's hard to go back there, but maybe look back at old messages, old pictures or get yourself in that state so that it feels a little bit better for you to actually go out and do those things. Something that maybe is like a fun little practice

That you could do from a very simple practical standpoint is whatever your subject or topic is, do a little bit of research real quick and ask yourself what's a subject or topic that my audience is interested in right now, because obviously you could do something in the past, but try to make it really centered to right now. What's a subject or topic that people care about right now. Then ask yourself what's something different or unique, or what's a unique view that you have on this topic. That's different from everybody else in your space. Or you

could do something like, What can I say to make this subject or topic more interesting or memorable, or what's a new perspective I can share on this topic or what's an alternative or polarizing way to view this topic or subject. It's not a huge deal, but if you know everybody's talking about Instagram Reels, for example, what's something that you can say that's different than everybody else? And all of a sudden, it just clicks in your head you're like, that's probably an interesting point of view Where if you're like, I don't even care about Reels. Reels

are probably the worst thing to happen to Instagram ever. That's starting off your video. Most people probably be like, wait, that's not what I've been told by everybody else. And then maybe you could switch it all of a sudden we're like, I think this because I feel like it's just distracting you from your core thing. Are you applying to DMs? Are you applying to comments? Don't get lost in the features really get like, I just made that up off the top of my head, but that's slightly different. I didn't really do very much. And then

if you wanna maybe stack that even further, maybe once you have that idea what's something different unique. Maybe now ask yourself what's the emotion or idea that I'm really trying to hit on and think about what facial expression should I match. So if I'm saying something like here's a surprise, just keep in your mind, like, okay, make a surprise facial expression Or I hear something I'm really, really upset about. Don't have a smile, put your head, search your video off, rubbing your forehead and be like, oh my God guys, okay. I gotta talk about this.

That sounds more convincing and more believable. Another thing you do is what's the place in setting. If you're talking about cleanliness and your background is disgusting and you're in a junk yard, maybe I don't wanna listen to you as a doctor. It's kind of like, well, you've look like you don't really healthy and clean. So I'm not gonna take your advice on, Bandaging wounds or whatever it might be. And then maybe one last thing too is think about the emotion. What emotion do you want them to feel in that context of those other stuff I

just talked about? So if you're trying to push them through an emotion, really match that, if you're saying, hey, here's something that everybody's doing wrong. Use body language, use your hand movement. Where if you're, if you can watch this on the video, if I'm like this cross armed and I'm like, I am so excited to tell you guys this right now, You can probably can't even believe it. It doesn't look like it. But if I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, okay. Hold on, hold on, stop, stop. I am so, okay, okay, I'm so excited. Like

it just looks more interesting. It's just gonna pull you in. Again going back to my earlier point. What's more interesting quality content wise me doing that versus someone with a white wall background, hands crossed looking like a robot. I'm like, here's three tips for marketing success. It's just dull and boring. So yeah, hopefully that's a nice little practice you could do hopefully write that down and it'll make it a lot easier. I promise you you'll go into this and you like, wow, this just became much more easier versus something struggling and frustrated. - You know,

one of the things I would love to ask you is examples of people on TikTok that you think are doing this really well. Maybe there's a couple creators that you've worked with, or maybe there's people that you follow on TikTok That would be a good model. And maybe you could just kind of describe what they're doing because one of the things that I found in my career is that when you find a model and you watch their stuff, you can get inspired 'cause it's one thing to listen to you and me talk about how important

it is to use vocal variety or to smile when you talk, which you can tell. It sounds different when you smile when you talk like the sound actually sounds different. It's another thing to actually see it in action. So are there a couple of creators on TikTok that you think Are doing a really good job telling stories and doing it in a way that's got a lot of great energy. If so, who are they? - Yeah, I think one that's really good. Well, I'll give like a few of 'em and then maybe you can list

out a list or something in the show notes somewhere. - Yeah, for sure. - There's this woman, I think her username is Kayla, K-A-Y-L-A reporting. And her thing is she used to be a news reporter. Now she does this thing where she kind of reports the news About her kids. She approaches it in a way that's energetic and it's funny and it's interesting where she's like today, I'm gonna try to do an interview with my son and see if we can get him to take a shower today. It sounds weird, it sounds kind of gimmicky.

And if you've been on TikTok, you've probably seen one of our videos go viral. I think it was like 80 million views, but it's really unique the way she approaches it, the storytelling, the energy on camera, her combining a skillset that she wants to talk about Reporting was something that's super hyper relatable, which is her being a mom and just dealing with her kids not being in the best moods all the time. Another one I think is. - Real quick. Does she act like she's on like location like, today I'm Kayla reporting from the kitchen

and today we're gonna talk to my son, Timothy. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - Literally like she's a reporter, you know? - Yeah, she starts it off with like the little thing in her ear like she's listening, Okay, yeah. Today we have, it's just so funny as if you're a parent, I'm not a parent, but if you're a parent, you're probably gonna laugh because the things she says, it's a little bit, it's funny at poke funs at our kids. She's like, and today he didn't wanna take a nap. So we already know what that's gonna be

about later on in bedtime. Like it's so funny. But again, it's unique, it's different, it's a fun approach, It has great energy, the storytelling, the way she kind of like sets the tone, her body language, Her facial expressions it matches so well because again, she's trying to pretend to be a legitimate news reporter talking about a legitimate problem. And you're like, oh, I'm really buying it, but she's staying outside her son's room and he is like, oh, he is kind of being a little bit of a brat. You know, we're gonna deal with that later.

Another one that's really good maybe is under the desk news. They went super viral. I think they now are partnered with New York Times. They report for New York Times (indistinct). - Under the desk, under the desk news. - Yeah, under the desk news, they'll have a little verified check marks. You go to see them very, very quickly. But very simply, they tell the news, they look super nice, they're dressed up, but they go underneath their desk and like, that's it. They just literally tell the news under their desk. Again, it's different, it's unique. But

the way they talk, the way they do their storytelling et cetera, it's just fun to watch and to consume versus everybody sitting at the top of their desk, Talking to the camera in a certain way, doing the same stuff. One woman I think is really, really good. Never talked to her, but I think she has a probably a really good example of everything I'm talking about. Her name is that this is Virginia Kerr, I think is how you said her last name. So this is Virginia and then K-E-R-R. She's a video coach. So obviously she's

good at video, but I think she does a really good thing of like tonality And facial expressions and body language and pacing and storytelling. If you go watch her content, I think it'd be a really, really good example of just trying to see something that really, really works. And then one last one, I gotta give him a shout out because I think this guy is just killing, I don't even know who he is, but his name is, this might be a little bit hard. So write this down to everybody. Z-I-S-H-A Craftsman. So it's like Zisha

Craftsman, this older. - Z-I-S-H-A, is that what you said? - Yeah, Z-I-S-H-A. Sorry I'm like looking at my screen. Z-I-S-H-A Craftsman. With this, he's an older man. I think he's like maybe in his '50s or '60s, he literally just makes handmade clay pots. The videos are three minutes long. There are very long videos, but it's such a high quality piece of content from everything I've talked about. Within about a month's time, he has almost a million followers and as currently he has 20 videos. That's not a lot of videos. That's not a lot of time

and he almost hit a million followers. But again, this person versus the average person, who's doing little clay pots or clay molding, he is going to dominate and demolish them because it's such a really good piece of content or video. So maybe those are some of 'em at the end we can do a show notes, I'll just do a Google spreadsheet. Maybe you could just give it away to the creators. - Hey, this is awesome. Now one of the things I wanna spend a few seconds talking about is the writing of the story, right? The

copywriting, if you will. And when we talked about copywriting, when we were preparing for this interview, I don't know if we meant something that is a script, or if it's something that goes alongside the video, but I would love to talk about both if you're willing to, 'cause I think a lot of people could use guidance and like, how to even tell a story in such a short period of time. Do you have any tips on like the elements if you will, that need to go into this? Should it be scripted and then talk about

copywriting a little bit. - Yeah, so I'm not a copywriter, I'm practicing, I'm trying to get better at it. A good friend of mine, his name's Boomer Cruz. He works at Salesforce, amazing copywriter. He really instilled the idea of me though that not to look at copy as just the written text, but copy in terms of just the language of everything, how to say it, how to structure ideas in your head From simple copywriting principles. How do I start the video? Guys if you're doing everything wrong in your marketing business and you're probably gonna go

bankrupt right now. Like I said that right now, because I know that's an interesting intro hook. I know it's pushing and pulling on the polarities of like, what you know, and I'm challenging points of view. So when I say cooperating, I'm not just saying in the written form, I'm talking about everything, the story, How you're gonna say things, the script, how you articulate it, even down to what you put in your actual video on TikTok as well as your caption, but the real question to being, how do you do a really good copywriting principle smash

into 15 seconds? I'll be honest, literally just go look up and just for the sake of time, just look up frameworks, copywriting frameworks, the hero's journey, or the Wise Age, the story of like, let's say for example, Star Wars and Luke Skywalker, it's the same story arc, as let's say the Lion King, Those are the same story arcs, the same archetypes. You could take that same thing and just smash it down to a smaller point. So intro hook something that you're dispelling as an idea. So, okay, if you're really focusing on Reels, you're never gonna

grow on Instagram. That's my intro. My thing is like, okay, I know everybody's been telling you about Reels, but here's what most people don't understand. That's kinda like my bridge. Now I'll go into the main subject. If you're focused on Reels, how are you gonna be focused on knowing your customers or your audience? Then I'm gonna give 'em something now that's like some kind of alternative. Instead of doing this, try doing this instead, then I'll give 'em a quick result. If you do this, you're gonna get a 30% conversion more and then code action, and

that's helpful, let me know. I could do that same exact structure that you would normally do for a giant email. Just try to each one as a sentence or a bullet point. So if you got intro, single sentence, you gotta hook, single sentence. You got a bridge, single sentence. I know it sounds kind of weird. I know it sounds a little bit harder than what I'm kind of articulating. But one quick, last thing is just go on TikTok, find people in your space and watch their video. Don't watch their video as sense of like, oh,

I love Michael's content. Watch it and dissect it. Break it down. Pause after five seconds, the first five seconds and see what do they say, how they say it, write it down. The next five seconds, the next five seconds. You'll start to build out frameworks all of a sudden, you don't have to think anymore because you're kind of doing by practicing. If you could just literally find video content and dissect it and break it down and write it down, you could almost create templates all a sudden. That lady, Virginia Kerr, hopefully she doesn't mind, go

watch her videos, break it down. And she will literally give you a formula where it's like, she started this way, she bridged it that way. She gave a different point of view. She gave me an example and she ended the video. You could literally just repeat that process. Watch and (indistinct) over and over and over again, which a lot of really good creators do, whether they're conscious of it or not. They're doing this same formula. An easy one he could do is instead of doing this, do this instead, it's so easy. Instead of you doing

this podcast, my cure, Try this one instead, then tell what it is, real quick sentence why, that's it, like it's so, so simple. - You know, we. - Although it's a little harder. - Yeah, it's I mean, I am a copywriter and I have a background in copy and we've developed our own little model that we use internally when we're writing emails. But I do think if I shared it, it would also be useful for video. It's called the paso model, P-A-S-O And it's problem, agitation, solution, and outcome. And the problem is, for example, our

audio hasn't been perfect this entire time, okay? And agitating, it means some of you might not have been able to hear everything Michael said. The solution is you need a higher speed, internet access and the outcome is, if you get that, it solves the problem. Your audio's gonna sound perfect every single time. Now I literally said that probably within 15 seconds. And you can see like the problem is a legit problem people can relate to, the agitation is important when you tell people, If you don't solve this, this is what's at risk, the solution, simple

and then the outcome is like a desired outcome or promise. Now that's not all that different than what you just said. And of course there's a concept of a bridge in there, which is you gotta have a good transition between all these things. But that is a model that I think you could work over and over again. And it doesn't just have to be about Michael. It could be like, don't you hate it when your AirPods die on you, When you're right in the middle of a walk and like you have to hold your phone

up to your ear. I mean and people walk, drive by and look at you strange, 'cause you're holding your phone up to your ear, don't you wish there was a better solution? You need a super blah, blah, blah, instant charger. I'm making it up, right? And when that happens, you won't look like a fool when you go for a walk again. I mean, again, you see what I just did there, right? - And I think the interesting part too, that you indirectly showed is that, You just gave a better story. That was an interesting story

that you wrapped around. You didn't really even talk so much about the product Apple or the AirPods and you could've switched it where it's like, I'm tired of these happening where these AirPods die, that's why I got these for 80 hours or 200 hours or whatever. It's like, it's a more interesting memorable story to listen to versus AirPods, have a battery life of 600. - (indistinct) phone up in the ear, right? Everyone's gonna remember. - Yeah, yeah. - This guy with his phone held up to his ear. - Yeah, exactly. Or if you're jogging your

hands bobbing up and down, it looks weird. If you're doing video obviously on TikTok, that's just so much better of a story. I think through your own example, like that's more interesting then, AirPods have a total watch time or air time of it's like well, I don't wanna hear stats at like, You sound like you're reading from a manual, which a lot of people I feel like unconsciously or subconsciously or indirectly are actually kind of doing in their content, especially for business owners where it's like, our soap is made out of 100 per nobody cares,

like nobody cares. - What about when there's a trend? Like these trends that are going on, oftentimes there doesn't seem to be a story with trends. Is that kind of becoming like not such a big deal anymore? - No, no, no. I think most people misinterpret the power of trends and why trends work. Trends give you a framework in which to be creative and to tell a story around. If I asked you Michael right now to make a funny story relating to your business and your marriage using the door behind you, you're like, I don't

know. But a trend literally just gives you that framework like, here's the punchline, here's the subject matter, here's how you're supposed to approach it. Here's the bilanguage and here's the outcome or whatever. So I think a lot of times people think the trends are like this favoritism that TikTok gives. No, TikTok is optimizing for engagement. Like that's all they care. So they give you a cool little trend to jump on and you could be funny all of a sudden, full disclosure most people are not full disclosure, but something kind of rude to say is like,

most people aren't that funny. They might think they're funny, but in terms of creating videos that are hilarious, it's hard, but if you jump on a trend, All of a sudden you're kind of a comedic genius all of a sudden. - Yeah, 'cause you have permission to try something 'cause you're just somebody else, right? - Yeah, so if you can jump on a trend, jump on a trend 100%. If it makes sense, I mean, obviously don't do a trend if it's gonna make your business look bad or it doesn't feel natural to you or if

it doesn't feel good to you, I would never want you to do a trend just for the sake of doing a trend, but if it's applicable and it's fun And you could tell your story, jump on it because more likely than not, you're probably gonna tell a better story through that trend than what you could possibly do by sitting there and be like, what's a funny punchline that's gonna talk about their pain point and their ideal outcome? I don't know, you know what I mean? It's the same thing too without even trend like, the stitch

feature, the duet feature on TikTok, there are all these features that help you tell a better story. For people who don't know what a stitch is. You just take a piece of a clip from another part of a video you put to the beginning and you're almost doing some sign of social commentary. Very simple, very easy. Again, most people I think think that TikTok's favoring that, but it's like, no, they gave you a really good intro and a really good premise as a quick example, that was probably my favorite. There was this video that was

trending where this wife asked her husband to take out the trash. And he was like, "Hold on babe, I'll do it in a little while." 'Cause he was playing his video game. He gets up and then he goes to take it out and she walks out and she bumps him and she's like, "Nevermind. I asked you like a hundred times." And he's just like, "Oh my God, it's not." That's probably happened to a lot of people, that happens often, it's kind of funny, but there was this psychologist and oh no he was a therapist, a

couple's therapist. He stitched the main point. And he said you know what's actually funny? Is that 70% of the people that come into my practice end up in divorce because they do that and they think that's funny. If you wanna learn how to not get divorce, find out more. And I thought that was brilliant because we're laughing at it. But he's saying, oh no, those little passive aggressive things that you said, actually are probably one of the things that I guess from his practice or his experience Lead to divorces. And I was like, that is

brilliant. But he probably would've never been able to act out that whole scenario that I just described to the couple, he just took a clip of it, gave some social commentary, his video, I think did went more viral than the actual original video that went viral because people like myself I was like, oh, I didn't know that, I thought it was funny, but maybe he's right. And then I went and watched a bunch of his videos and he explained why that was bad For like relationship dynamics. We don't need to get into that obviously. But

yeah the duets, the stitches and the trends, they really give you a framework in which to be creative. And like you said, permission to be funny, I've seen so many people that are not funny in their businesses that I talk to and I go their TikTok. I'm like, dude, you're hilarious. Like you never talk like that. And he's like, "Yeah, I don't know." I just, I will never do it on Facebook. I'll never do it on YouTube. I'll never do it on Instagram, but then sure enough, those contents are converting better because they're like, Michael

Stelzner is actually hilarious. I didn't know that, I just thought he was a marketing guy. - I am, it's kinda funny to be honest with you, but we're not gonna practice any of that humor here. - Yeah, you know, it's interesting though. - Yeah. Well, Michael, this has been really, really helpful. I think for a lot of our listeners. If people wanna check out all the great things You've got going like your brand new podcast and everything else, where do you wanna send them? - Podcast wise, talkthetalk.com or you can just look it up on

Spotify or Apple. - Yeah, okay, Talk the Tok, right? - Yeah, yeah. Talk like your talking and then Tok like T-O-K like TikTok. I'm gonna probably, I'm putting more up like lessons there. So each podcast is really short, it's like 15, 20 minutes. Really think of it as like a little mini training course. There's no up upside or nothing like that. I just wanna hopefully give some quick value So you can take away with it. Another one is talktools.com, is a tool that I built to help you audit. So if you're a social media manager

or your brand or your company, whatever you might be, it helps you go to any profile, analyze it, track it, audit it, and figure out what's going on and what's not going on behind the hood. Almost giving you like a little sneak peek behind the scenes of what they're actually doing. And then for you, what you should do more of. So yeah, just those two things to keep it simple. They're both free. So check it out, hopefully how. - Yeah, if people wanna reach out to you on a particular their social platform, do you have

a preference as to where they ping you? - Probably just Instagram michael.consulting. That's my username there, feel free. - Perfect. - Reach out, I'm usually in my DMs, yeah. - Awesome, Michael Sanchez. Thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom and answering all my litany of questions. We really appreciate you coming on today. - Yeah, thank you so much. It was fun. Hope I come back again and hopefully this was helpful.