If you have been on the internet
lately, I'm sure you've noticed that vertical video is taking over
from Instagram reels to tick talk. People are consuming vertical video. And as a business owner, this can
be an incredible opportunity to reach wider audiences, to build
that know, like, and trust factor. And today's guest Kenya Kelly is
going to teach us how to do that. Welcome back to the brand gravity show. I am your host, psychology driven brand
strategist, and While I have this love hate rela
tionship with social media and
short form content, It is effective. And I cannot wait to share this
interview with Kenya to give you some practical insights on how to
implement this for your business, how to make it work so that you can see
some of the same results that she has. She will tell you that if she
could have fast forwarded and known that vertical video would have. Such a massive impact on her bottom line. She would have told you that
you were bananas, that she would not have believed
it. And that has been the case for her. She has built her entire business
and frankly shifted her business model to harness the incredible
power of short form vertical video. Let's get to the interview. Thank you so much for being here. Let's dive straight to the good stuff. Why do you think so many business
owners are sleeping on the power of vertical video and short form video? you know, I think it's because, you
know, when you think about what we've all been doing from a marketing standpoint,
like we've always done it a certain way and for many years we were doing like
the live stream, the long form video? or we were just doing recorded horizontal
video uploaded to YouTube or to Facebook. And so to go from, here's the thing we've
been doing for 10 years or so to like. 15 seconds or one minute, it seems
like it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. Right. And then the average person
usually talks for five, 10 minutes. They like, how am I supposed
to get my message into 15 seconds or one mi
nute, you know? Yeah, Yeah. guilty, guilty. So get us excited about this. What kind of results have you
seen using TikTok specifically? Yeah. So one of the first things I always like
to tell the stories of like my clients. So one of my clients, she teaches
women in midlife, like 50 plus about like how to live a healthy
life and all the type stuff. And the average person was like,
well, she first was like, Oh, it's not going to work for me. Reels or TikTok is not
going to work for me. And I was l
ike, Let me come to your house. And the first video goes viral. She gains 10, 000 followers and
then now she has a hundred thousand. But more importantly, she started taking
these same concepts over to her Instagram. And it has exploded for her. And it is now the, the video
she creates on TikTok is what she uses for her paid ads. And she is just doing incredibly well at. In a 50 year old range for,
you know, that type of client. But the second client is this lady she
does, she teaches mystery sh
opping and she did not believe in it whatsoever,
but I taught her how to create a video. She did one and she put her phone
down, she went viral and she made 20, 000 in seven days, but then
she's made a million dollars in a business last year and this year, all. From vertical video. And so it's like, people
are starting to realize that there's something going on here. Like people are able to watch me
faster and get more interested. I love those. I love those case studies. They always get me excit
ed. Where to go from here? There's a bunch of different directions. But I just wanted to first
acknowledge, I mean, I've said these like the excuses to myself. I'm sure you've heard a bajillion of them. Like I've heard, well, I'm not on
TikTok, so I don't think my audience is. What are some of the objections
that you've heard people say? Yeah, So it's always been,
I don't want to dance. It's a goofy platform. I don't want to do that there. Secondly people always say
that my audience is not there
. They will say, well, people aren't
really making money on TikTok and all that, but I think it's because if
you're not actually spending time there, then you have no idea what's going on. Because years ago I was like, Instagram
is not, and then here we go today. Here's what Instagram is, you know? Yeah. yeah, yeah. And you blew those two right out of the
water because we talked immediately about a woman who's targeting midlife humans,
women, and is doing exceptionally well. And then also somebo
dy who was able to
turn in actual like return on investment and revenue right away, which is amazing. What do you attribute to their success? What do you think were the magic
ingredients that made this work for them? I think, first of all, it is just being,
just creating content there in general. Because people don't really understand or
just creating vertical content in general, because majority of people in businesses
are not creating vertical content. So the fact that they're doing
it, that's
the biggest bang for their buck over everybody. Right. The second thing is not acting like
they're on Facebook because like Facebook has a culture or LinkedIn has
a culture and TikTok and Reels have more of a, it's allows for more creativity. And so they allow themselves to
be understand the culture and then come into it from their range and
their particular audience, and they just started creating content, but
they also keep it short and sweet. They're not trying to keep you
watching this supe
r long video. Whereas the vertical video platforms, it's
like 15 seconds is usually pretty good, but you can go longer if you want to. And they've just adapted what
is actually happening in the culture for their business. And they're still targeting their same
audience, women over 30, 40, 50, whatever, but they're just doing it in a way that is
relatable because like people don't really understand that when you are marketing
something, you've got to try to relate to the people that you're market
ing to. And they are the people
that they're marketing to. So they've said to themselves. What do I deal with as a midlife woman? And they just like list
out all these things. And when they're creating content,
they know what they will respond to and their clients do an exact same thing. Amazing. And what does it take to actually
make money on these platforms? I know that you teach your students how to
build out funnels that have the vertical videos as, as the top of the funnel. What does the re
st of
that process look like? things that, I mean, obviously
when they have like the real pay program or the Tik TOK pay program,
you can get paid like that. But for the most part, I am
mostly teaching people like. Use these platforms as
lead generators, right? Don't focus on, Oh, I just made
today a hundred thousand dollars from TikTok from this one video. No, you're focusing on a consistent,
creating a community and you're pulling them off of social media. With the link. So like? we have links
on Tik TOK and on Instagram,
where if somebody opts in from Instagram, we know that person came from Instagram. They came from Tik TOK. It came from there. Then once they're on email, now we're
selling them our products and services. So we don't typically make a bunch of
money from the video we posted, right? We get a lot of leads from what we post
and then the leads turn into sales. Yes. Yes. Powerful distinction. Okay. Fill me in. TikTok is starting to
grow up as a platform. It's been around
for several years now. Things are changing. What are some of the emerging
trends or shifts that we need to be paying attention to? One of the major things is that TikTok
is all focused about long form video now. Like it used to be where you could
upload a video up to 20 minutes. Now you can record a video
up to 10 minutes on TikTok. And so, cause they're like, we're,
we started with short form, but that was never our long term goal. Their long term goal is how do we do
what we do and compare wit
h YouTube. And so they are really,
really, really pushing that. So they like launched some different
pay programs where you'll get paid per view, once your video is uploaded. Over one minute. And so they've launched that then
they launched and it's just taking over right now, which is TikTok shop. And that's two parts. One, if you have a physical product,
you're able to put your inventory into TikTok shop, and then people are able
to make purchases or whatever that way. But they're really pushin
g influencers,
just people in general to join the program and actually start creating content for. Let's just say this particular
lip gloss, it's in there. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to
do a video around this lip gloss. Well, I'll start getting paid like
an affiliate to sell this product. And all of that stuff is
automatically already in TikTok shops. So they don't have to reach out to us. We can literally go and look for
the deals that make sense to us. And It's like it's huge for both peopl
e. It's like TikTok is not only competing
with YouTube, like you mentioned, but it sounds like it's going to
be competing with Amazon as well. Yeah, well, let me tell you about that. So it's like, Oh my God. So apparently the grapevine is they're
launching a fulfillment center here in the U S very similar to Amazon. Yes. And in addition to that, take talk
is launching its own products. Now I don't love this, but
this, it is what it is. And so let's just say this lip
gloss is trending in America.
Well, take talk is going to recreate this. And they're going to sell their
version of this on TikTok and in the fulfillment center. So it's not fun because they're going
to be duping products, but yeah, Yeah, really following
Amazon's footsteps there. Good and bad, unfortunately. right. What tools, apps, websites,
resources do you recommend people use when they're getting into this? Yeah. So number one, you definitely
want to make sure that you are learning how to create content. On TikTok and
or on Instagram reels. But the second app that everybody
is addicted to is CapCut. Because CapCut allows for editing,
allows for great captions. It allows for different
templates and trends. There's so much built into this? app and it is sinking. Like it sinks a hundred percent with
TikTok, but I think that I'm pretty sure they're working on their whole process
thing with Instagram reels as well. Amazing. Amazing. That's super helpful. And if I'm brainstorming and sitting
down to think about wha
t my first couple videos should be, I think
we already kind of alluded to this, but dive in a little bit deeper. What should I create content on? Yeah, so first things first, I
always tell, if you're brand new on? TikTok, first thing you want
to do is go to the search page. So don't start creating, but go to
the search page, type in what you do. So if it's branding, if it is hair care,
just type in one word or two words. And then what's going to happen
is all the top performing content is going
to pull up on that page. You're going to be able to binge watch. Basically your competitors to see
what videos are doing the best, like what topics are doing the best. And so the first thing you can do is just. Pull what is already working, especially
if you know your expertise around it. And then the second thing is
definitely going to be, if there's something that's happening right
now, that's current in the media or whatever, create content around that. If it relates to you and to your
brand,
and then from a business standpoint, like if your business
is selling ABC product this month, That you need to be creating content. It's going to help you get leads
towards selling that product. Super helpful and help us avoid
some of the common mistakes. What do you see people
doing that just falls flat? Yeah. Number one is you're not actually
learning the culture of the platform. So it's like, if you are killing it on
LinkedIn, you're not going to kill it on TikTok the way that you are on Lin
kedIn. You have to come and learn. What is actually happening here? That doesn't mean you have to be goofy
or do things on off brand, but you do. I just have to go, what is
happening by just watching content. Okay. The second thing you want to
learn is you want to learn how to actually stop the scroll. And that's on any social platform,
but basically with short video, you've got one to a hundred and a half. Second, to capture someone's attention,
because they just scrolled on you on the for you
page, and they're going
to scroll right away if there's not a reason for them to stop and watch you. And so you want to have something that
we call the hook, whether it is your text on screen, it's the first image that they
see, or it's the first thing that you say, you want to give people a reason to. Stop and watch your video. And then the last thing is don't make
your video longer than it needs to be. Okay. So don't start it with, Hey guys,
or introducing yourself, just start right in on your
hook. Give them what you need to
give them and then go away. Because if everybody is watching
your videos all the way through, or most of the way through the
algorithm says, Ooh, people love this. I'm going to send it to more people. But if your video is two minutes and
it could have just been one, then you just kind of ruined like what could
have happened on the for you page. Mm hmm. I know that I'm guilty
of the millennial pause. I like Yeah. sit there for a second before I start
talking and
I always have to edit that out so that it's not because we do want
that just to catch people's attention. Are there any other tips or tricks to keep
people watching throughout the content? Yeah. So definitely doing jump cuts and a
jump cuts basically are where you've talked for you've talked for three
seconds and then let's just say you're holding your finger down and you're
recording and you hold your finger down, you're recording for three seconds,
then you stop and then you start again. Righ
t. And it feels like it's like in
the movies, like when you watch a movie, you're seeing one scene and
then it cuts to another scene, even though you may be in the same scene. Spot, you just want to have different
cuts because it just makes it, people feel like that they're watching something else. So you, you kind of want to do that. Another thing you can do is
actually change scenes, right? So sometimes I'll be here in my office. I have the background and then I
will, I'll do the first part th
ere. Then I'll go into my walk in
closet and do the second part. And then the third part, I will go on
the balcony and then I'll come back here. It just gives people this
different type of experience. And it's just like, it's keeping
their attention and your video. But lastly, the thing that most people
may not be doing is captions, okay? Because like 80 percent of people watch
videos on mute because they don't want to hear one second of a hundred videos. So they've muted it and then
they choose
to unmute if they see something that they're interested in. And one of the best things you can
do is have on captions that that are easily that they, that they can read. And then having that hook that's on
screen, that's going to get you way more people watching your videos. Super smart. I love that. Do you have anything that you wish
that you could tell like your younger self when you were getting started
on Tik Tok or with vertical video? Yeah, I would say, I wish I would have actually,
you k
now learn the culture first, like as it pertains to me as a business owner. Now, granted, there was nobody
doing that when I got in in 2020. But I wish that I had focused on my
content as a business owner and not all the fun trends because of all 2020, I
was doing all the fun trends, having a good time, not really realizing
what was going to happen there. And so as a result, we grew hundreds and
thousands of followers, but then we got stuck at 400, 000 followers for a year
and a half, we were g
aining hundreds of day and losing hundreds a day. Because once I started to focus
in on my business, everybody that joined the funny Kenya was like,
I don't, I'm not here for this. And so they started leaving. It really messed with my low
heart watching people leave. But eventually I'm now we're at 500, 000
and I'm like, okay, we're in the clear. You know? Yeah, I feel like that's such a great lesson
to share with people because all growth. Isn't that early strategic growth? It's not necessarily
every
follower is not equal. So I think that there's probably
some strategy and talk to us a little bit about that shift. So what, what did it look like? If you shifted to more
business focused content? Yeah, So I think it was towards the end of 2020
when I started really seeing, like, I started getting the revelation of like. Oh, I'm here because this is
actually going to be this platform. That's going to help me with my business. Cause like I got on TikTok cause
I was praying one day and I he
ard God tell me to get on there, but he
didn't really like detail why I was there, but I started just being there. So at the end of the year, when I started
understanding, I was like, Oh man. So now I've got to figure out
how to like, how to do this. And so I battled for like probably
a year and a half of doing funny goofy stuff and, and business stuff. Cause I really like, I was
watching my content flop as a business and like, but it would do
really well with the goofy stuff. And it was really,
really challenging
for like a year and a half of me, like trying to like, Settle in. And so finally, one day I just
said, look, Kenya, you just got to lose all the followers. Lose everybody that is not wanting
to be there and you've got to focus. And so I just focused in and I just kept
on for like six, nine months of just focusing and I'm watching my followers
just go down, but I was watching my leads in my email system go up. So I kept focusing on like, here
are the leads that are happening v
ersus the follower numbers. But I had to keep talking to
myself because it didn't feel good. Yeah. I imagine that was really tough. And now thankfully you help people avoid
that same fate by teaching them how to leverage Tik TOK and vertical video. Where can people find more of
everything that you're teaching? Obviously on Tik TOK. So tell us about that,
but anywhere else as well. Yeah, for sure. So I teach everything on pretty much on
all social platforms, including Instagram. But I teach, I ha
ve courses and one
on one consulting and things like that, all on my website, Kenya kelly. com. But you will like, you'll know what
I teach by just when you're watching my little short videos, you'll
see, oh, this is what she teaches. It's very, very clear that
I'm teaching you and C. Do you still mix in funny videos
here and there, or is it all business all the time now? It is 99 percent business, but
TikTok has a lot of trends and Instagram has adapted them. I will take the trends and
actually
make it about my business. So there was this one, I love this video. There was a guy who was
acting like he was crying. He runs to the bed, he falls on the
bed and then he falls off the bed. And so you hear the sound of him
hitting the bed and hitting the floor. And I was like, how can I
use that for my business? And so I filmed myself in my living
room and I always use my cat for clout. Cause like he's just, he's old. He's not really going to move. So like he was on the couch and I
set up my l
ight and you hear, like, you hear the guy crying and I'm like,
run to the couch, fall on the couch. And I fall off and I roll up and my
cat is like, what, what's going on? But my text on screen says,
when you send an email to 20, 000 people with the wrong link. And my audience was like, I have
like, everybody could relate to that, that we're business people, you know? So it's like, my content is still
funny, but it's relatable to who I'm still trying to target. Brilliant. I love that so much. Th
is probably comes natural to you,
but how did you come up with that idea? Like, how do you actually
brainstorm how to apply the different trends to your business? It's definitely a process. I always tell people that like,
I didn't wake up one day and just got really good with it. But what happened was like,
the more time you spend. Like on 2020, when I was spending time on
TikTok and watching one guy do something and then seeing people do something
totally different with it, it wasn't about busi
ness, but it was about whatever
they wanted it to be about, you know, and I got the realization of like, I've
got to grow an audience for business. So maybe I can try to figure
out it for my business. And most times I have to sit there
and think about it and go, okay. Is this really funny? Is this really relatable? And then I'll try it. If it doesn't hit, I'm like, okay, fine. I'll do it again, like maybe in
a week or so and see which one actually relates to my audience. But you literally have t
o try, but
you have to like more so think about. What is something that happens
every single day to people as an entrepreneur, whether you're a woman,
you're a woman of color, whether whatever it is, what happens to people? And I'm like, these are the scenarios. And then I come up with stuff that way. This is a masterclass in
vertical video and TikTok. I love it so much. We already shared where
to find more from you. I would love if you could end us up with
what action or like little nugget of k
nowledge you want Bold to either do or
take with them after listening to this. Yeah. So the first thing I
really want you to do is. If you're contemplating Tik TOK or reels
in general, just kind of get it out of your head, the goofy videos that you've
seen, the viral videos that you've seen that are not business related, just put
those to the side and think, and ask yourself this question of like, if we've
got people that are 30, 40, 50, and are consuming content on this platform, cause
the data
is showing it, then that probably means that I need to show up there. Right. And so just start like setting
in your mind that like your audience is watching this content. They just may not be posting content. Right. And then the second thing I want
you to do is I really want you to go to TikTok and don't scroll the
For You page, but do a search. It's like a little magnifying
glass and upper right hand corner. Do a search and type in one or two
words for your business, and then just start watchi
ng that content. And then once you see the stuff that
really resonates with you, bookmark it. Okay. And then go back to those and
recreate some of those your way. That's when you're really going to start
seeing, Oh, here's how this works for me. And I can put this on Tik TOK or Facebook
reels or YouTube shorts or Instagram reels, because that's the basic things
is what really going to get you started and cause you to believe is seeing your
people and then you doing what they did. Great advice. I
love everything that
we've shared here today. Thank you so much for making the
time, Keegan, for educating us, sharing your wisdom, your experience. You're incredible. Thank Oh, Thank you. so much. I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much for listening to this
episode of the brand at gravity podcast. We found it useful. Please subscribe. Give us a thumbs up if you're watching
here on YouTube, if you're listening on your favorite podcast player, I
would hugely appreciate if you could go and leave
us a five star review. It helps more smart entrepreneurs
like yourself find this show and benefit from this insights and
these incredible guests that I have. Thank you so much for listening. Let me know in the comments. or on social media, come find either
Kenya or myself and let us know what are you going to implement from this episode? What did you learn? What was your insight and
aha moment that you got from spending this time with us today? I cannot wait to hear. Let's continue this conversa
tion
and I'll see you in the next episode of the brand gravity show.
Comments