Special Winter Pricing: Regularly $900 is now 50% off—$450. Enroll Here.
Introduction:
As TikTok’s seemingly infinite market reach continues to grow, so does the thirst for more and more content—so much so that social teams often struggle to keep up with demand. Although you would think a bigger budget would help, it doesn’t always guarantee results.
TikTok changed the perspective away from the highly polished and curated content towards ‘reality’. Why is it that a post will often perform better if filmed over lunch in the kitchen, rather than in a well-lit professional studio? Furthermore, if this snappy short-form media lends itself to the feel of ‘personality’, an environment easier for influencers to thrive, where is the room for a brand? In this two-part masterclass, we will look at the need to imitate that personal feeling while also delivering real-world value to the viewer that is worth subscribing to.
This course is brought to you by Joshua Morris, a content strategist and influencer who amassed a following of over 2 million followers with a great bulk of that growth happening while working on brands. He will take you through fundamental questions, such as video length and how many posts per week, to bigger concepts, like when your brand should be front and center and when it should lurk in the background. Sometimes, there is an art to hiding advertising in believable organic content, but equally, if the video is engaging, a viewer will choose to watch an obvious Ad if it feels open, sincere, and asks for very little.
If your TikTok already has 100k subscribers or if it’s still a door you’re afraid to open wide, let’s inject some excitement into your social marketing strategy and prepare your business to stand strong in this somewhat playful world.
Module 1: Building a Brand Presence and Content Style that Resonates on TikTok.
Description:
Yesterday if you weren’t the top search on Google you probably weren’t even a company – today your brand needs a blue tick and a well-presented page to earn consumers’ attention and trust. We will look at carefully sculpting the legitimacy of your profile page (the important place where viewers make that final decision whether to follow or not) and take a peek at how big brands adapt specifically for this market. In this medium we cannot simply use a photo or clips from an old advert, instead, it is essential to learn how to organically and consistently post. First, we understand what value our audience appreciates and then we can dissect the styles of content that will fill that need.
Key Takeaways
Key takeaways:
- Understanding the TikTok revolution, what did it change, how does it work, and who uses it?
- Is there a B2B market? How can short form be useful in generating leads?
- Crafting your branded profile to entice the followers. We will look at what successful brands currently do to stand out and gain followers and importantly what they do differently for TikTok.
- Distinguish between the different types of posts you can add to your content calendar to bring variety while continually experimenting.
- Learn how to optimize organic content creation from your current team, what posts should be planned in advance, and which can be reactive.
- Hooks, storyboarding, CTA’s etc.—the structure of a post.
- Creativity is often an issue. This ‘game’ (for want of a better word) requires steady commitment and attention and it can be hard to think of what an audience might be interested in. Learn ways to keep things fresh and how to use your current following to generate ideas.
- How to get more views on your posts! It’s important to understand the system: your brand’s page is not about many views spread across your posts but instead relies heavily on waves of virality that ebb and flow.
- Editing techniques that can be applied to any editing platform.
- Going live and using stories—what does that mean and what’s the point?
- Look into posting consistently—how many is enough?
- The invention of the doppelgängers ‘Reels’ and ‘Shorts’ gives us an opportunity to be resourceful with our content production. Learn the key differences—how about one content strategy, with multiple tweaked outputs?
Module 2: TikTok Technical Strategy and Generating Sales and Leads.
Description:
Here we will step slightly away from content creation leaning towards strategy. We will consider the importance of understanding our own analytics and how they can help us produce better and better content and fundamentally what is and isn’t worth repeating.
Although organic content is at the core of your short-form strategy—can TikTok offer more than just exposure? Although sales will inevitably come from a viral post of a product or service, pushing a different approach might be better suited. In this module, we will take a look into the huge potential of paid ads on TikTok and especially that of influencers and their targeted audience.
Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways:
- What does the algorithm want from us? And how to not allow it to dictate what we deliver.
- Does your brand need a face on screen?
- Is there a science to Virality…. This is every brand’s dream right, a big viral video. Well yes of course the exposure can be worth years of marketing budgets in one post. If this is done wrong, however, you can attract followers to your brand who are there to see something completely different. This can affect your account both positively and negatively.
- Surprise surprise…. Influencers can live up to their name. Learn how to access what scale, size, and type of audiences you need by using someone already in possession of your market. Sometimes this is well worth paying vast amounts of money for—however, often it can be done simply with more effort and free products to lesser-sized influencers.
- Is your content strategy predominantly for exposure or are you looking for sales from social media? Learn how trade fits into the TikTok model.
- The differences between ads you can run on TikTok and which type will achieve your specific goal.
- eCommerce and the future of the ‘TikTok shop’.
- Looking forward: how can we keep up with this shifting environment—must we change with it?
- The opportunity to ask the obvious and the advanced questions you want the answers to from a working professional constantly battling ‘the algorithm’.
How to Convince Your Boss Why You Should Take this Class:
- Cost effectiveness—Generating in-house organic content instead of often costly outsourcing. Identifying which content is best to be used as a ‘paid promotion’ to achieve a targeted goal.
- Creativity—We can’t just post the same things that don’t work repeatedly. Learn a varied range of styles and latch on to what works, and how to test to get new winners.
- Level Up Your Confidence—Given the often-playful nature of this style of content it’s very easy to doubt yourself. Even the failures are full of lessons; what are they?
- Potential for sales—We will be looking at the potential for e-commerce directly on TikTok.
- Huge exposure—Up your chances of a truly viral branded video that can transform your business.
- The TikTok Ticking Clock—The app isn’t going anywhere, the longer you wait to build a sizeable audience the harder it will be as the market saturates and restricts organic growth.
The Presentations:
- The workshops are hands-on and practical.
- The workshops are live so that you can ask your questions. If the course doesn’t fit in with your calendar, you can take the course as a recorded class.
- Included are lots of examples of inventive, relevant, and successful branded content.
Download Material:
- Recorded video of the presentations with slides and audio.
- PDF download of the complete presentations.
Who is the course for?
- Social Media Managers.
- Digital Marketing Managers.
- Creative Directors.
- Newcomers to TikTok.
- Anyone who struggles to create consistent ‘organic content’.
The Presenter:
Joshua Morris
Joshua Morris is an instructor for the TikTok masterclass for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. Joshua is a brand-focused social media strategist specializing in short-form content, most notably on TikTok and Instagram. His classes focus on organically generating content in-house.
- Awarded a first-class BA in acting from a renowned UK-accredited drama school. Transferable skills learned during this time have made viewers feel comfortable watching Joshua’s ads on screen.
- Joshua has taught several courses on social media at the globally respected British Film Institute. He has also lectured staff and students on social media at the Universities of East London and the University of Durham.
- Joshua is currently a content creator for Rubik’s (since 2020) to mirror his success on their branded page, which, within a year, had flourished to over 200 thousand subscribers, which has since doubled.
- As an influencer, Joshua thrives by selling content and screen time to his 2.5 million followers, regularly putting him in close contact with new brands.
- Content strategy and production include brands such as ACER, RedBull, Microids, Google, META, and Cineworld.
- Working directly for TikTok on two separate campaigns, (#LearnOnTikTok, TikTok shop Lives UK) gives Joshua extra insight into a famously vague company.
- TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@joshua_cubed?_t=8hMQUWQxWYT&_r=1
- Instagram- https://instagram.com/joshua_cubed?igshid=M2RkZGJiMzhjOQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
Workshop dates and times:
WINTER 2025
Module 1: Understanding Your Audience and then Creating the Right Content.
Monday January 27, 2025.
12:00PM – 2:00PM PST
Module 2: Honing Your Strategy with Influencers and Analytics.
Monday February 3, 2025.
12:00PM – 2:00PM PST
