ImagesMagUK_September_2020

www.images-magazine.com 24 images SEPTEMBER 2020 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT ourselves although we could do with help translating all of them into YouTube and putting our content into blog posts as that’s time-consuming. We are looking for someone to do that role. We could use the same content in different ways across five different platforms. What have been the results? The reach on it is just phenomenal. I just looked up one post today and on Facebook it has had 148 views, on Instagram the same post has had 8,000 views, but the same post at the same time on TikTok has already had 12,500 views. One post [on screen printing a two-colour T-shirt] has had 2.6 million views. Sometimes you can have something on for a month and then suddenly it goes crazy. Figures show people end up consuming TikTok for about an hour and 90% of people who use it go on it every day. It homes in on what you are looking at and interacting with. What I see is completely different from what you see. It’s translating into sales already. The return on investment is massive. We were getting a lot of enquiries from Instagram. With TikTok, they tend to move over to more serious platforms to contact us. Squeegee & Ink has been using micro-video sharing platform TikTok to market its business with “phenomenal” results. Co-captain Chessie Rosier-Parker talks to Images about engagement, reach and the power of the masses to us to ask how to expose a screen. We can say we have a video of that. The reason to use video is that it builds engagement. We are always asking other people for information as well. You can’t just put it out. It shows customers you are engaged, you are here, you are accountable, they can ask questions, you will respond. People say they find it difficult to dream up content from their business, but if you take a look at TikTok, you can come up with ideas for videos using different formats, adding music. There’s lots of fun things you can have. We have got some really silly videos coming up. TikTok is where we are talking to people on a more chatty basis. We don’t try to actively sell. It has to look like you’re having fun. Using it to sell is not going to work. It will drive people away. You have to be a bit fun with TikTok to get attention. One post a week is not enough. You have to push it and then it will grow. Other people on TikTok are not doing it enough. We make all the videos How did you get into using TikTok at Squeegee & Ink? We’ve been on it just as users since January, but we actually started doing videos for the business properly in May. Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crushing It is the reason we got into TikTok. He talks about businesses that have worked it into their business model to get it in front of people. TikTok shut down Trump’s rallies [with a campaign to inflate attendance expectations through fake ticket requests]. That shows the power of TikTok. It’s the power of masses of people getting together. They can shut things down, but they can also help you out. What kind of content have you been putting on TikTok? A lot of our videos are to teach people little snippets about what we do so we look like experts. You might be mixing emulsion or telling people about halftones. It might not be something they were interested in, but you’re engaging with them. People may come ‘TikToking’ all the right boxes A still from one of Squeegee & Ink’s most popular TikTok videos Chessie Rosier-Parker