Social Media: a Must Have for Growing Businesses

Lydia Lysenkova social influencer on TikTok joined Twinning Strategy on Friday 6/21's Episode. For an older crowd like me (I'm 51), TikTok is a mystery beyond the videos that come up reposted on YouTube. Lydia meanwhile has been building an impressive following of >450000 on the platform with the handle belikelydia. Influencers like Lydia tend to make it look easy, but it is far more complex to get this right. Lydia recommends for companies to get help, i.e. experts that not only know how to post a video, but in fact are users and creators on the platform. She explains that the platforms all have their own character and (sometimes unwritten) rules. TikTok, for example, moves fast. If you are going to keep up with the music, the fonts, the trends, etc. you can't be operating with old content. But old is defined in dyas or weeks, not in years.

Companies are slow to adapt in many ways and in many cases. Traditional marketing, founded in the era of billboards, TV and print ads, has a perfectionist vein that runs through it. Jeff explains that this is rooted in the cost, resources, approval time, etc. that it takes to get anything out into the world in these media channels. Social media upends this. The discussions leading up to content creation and the approval process once it is generated can often take months to trudge through. What happens in the TikTok world in months? Your company video and all your clever thinking are old and boring. Or, if you made something generic to avoid this problem, then your content is generic. 

Lydia points to the need to understand your brand first--you can't create a good vehicle for a message if you don't have a message (or if it is completely garbled and unclear). Given that though, you need to understand the nature of of the platform, what people want to see there, and what formats work. LinkedIn (where I spend an inordinate amount of time) is a professional social network, i.e. don't post pictures of cats or videos of you dancing like a fool at the bar. TikTok on the other hand, Lydia explains, is not about direct selling of your product. In other words, you need to 'sell without selling'. The videos on TikTok need to make your audience 'fall in love' with your brand. This could be by creating goofy videos about your airline perhaps using your flight staff, or it could be telling your brands unique and interesting story through the people who actually love your products. 

I have to admit, with Heather K. Margolis encouraging Instagram a couple of weeks ago and Lydia encouraging  TikTok, I am feeling a little overwhelmed with all the platforms that need to be managed. But the message is clear, each platform has its place and approach. The education on what works is going to be trial and error at first, but learning curves are usually steep early on. Twinning Strategy is a great vehicle for learning on. With the expansion of capabilities in digital, automation, AI, and traditional marketing and BD enabling materials, we're starting to build a great toolkit that we can use for our client companies.