Heather K Margolis of 360insights On How To Use TikTok To Grow Your Business

An Interview With Ben Ari

I really enjoy the filters on TikTok, and I like the time limits the platform provides, where you can now record for up to three minutes. By contrast, on Instagram, you can only create a one-minute video. So, if I’m talking about a piece of content or an event that I’m attending, having TikTok pre-timed ensures I’m not exceeding three minutes. People tune out by that point anyway. It’s important to remain true to those guardrails.

TikTok is currently the fastest-growing social network. If you want to communicate with Gen-Z, that is the place to do it. But for those who are used to the interface of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, TikTok seems to require a steep learning curve. What do you need to know to use TikTok to grow your business or engage with your customers? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders, social media managers, marketing managers, and influencers about “5 things you need to know to leverage TikTok to grow your business.” As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Heather K. Margolis.

Heather K. Margolis is senior vice president of Marketing at 360insights, after her companies Spark Your Channel, creators of a through-channel marketing automation platform, and Channel Maven Consulting, a strategic channel marketing agency, were acquired in November 2021. Heather is a recognized channel expert and sought-after keynote speaker for a variety of audiences including entrepreneurship, building a service-led business, B2B strategy, B2B marketing and channel marketing. A self-proclaimed ‘recovering channel professional,’ Heather is passionate about helping vendors drive sales through channel partners.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?

I started working at a very young age, so it has always a place of pride for me. I grew up in a small town and had a few unique jobs, like running a hardware store and another at an auto body shop. I was in situations where I had to learn a lot. I’m also a fourth-generation entrepreneur so the question on starting a company wasn’t if, but when.

Tell us about what led you to this specific career path?

I started my career in financial services but always wanted to move into tech. I went to business school and focused on high tech marketing and sales. After graduating from business school, one of my classmates was part of the ‘channel organization’ for a large technology company, and at the time, I had no idea what that was. I started as a contractor and moved around a bit before starting Channel Maven. I was just so drawn to the channel because of the relationship building, the 1+1=3 metaphor, and making sure that I was adding value.

What is the most interesting story that has happened to you since starting this career?

After Channel Maven was up and running for about 10 years, I decided to launch a software company that married the functionality of the team with the technology that enabled it. That was just such an interesting experience and not just because we launched 3 weeks before Covid shut down the world. I had been around other people who had raised money, and I had worked at a VC firm in an administrative role. But being the one raising money and to boot, raising money during a pandemic, was both exhilarating and challenging. I previously had a cofounder, but when the pandemic hit, the risk to them, was too great. I ended up doing it on my own, and while I would not suggest that to anybody, it was a great learning experience.

It has been said that sometimes our mistakes become our greatest teachers. Do you have a story or a humorous mistake you made when you were first starting out, and the lessons that you learned from that?

When first starting to use social media, I approached the medium to be thought-provoking and a bit of an instigator. One day, I called-out a top 10 tech company for launching a blog. I felt they were making a big deal, and I quipped, ‘Mazel tov, it’s a boy!’ When their channel leader publicly ripped into me on the blog, it was quite a humbling experience. We’ve since become friends, and he’s become someone that I look to both as a peer and a mentor. When I finally met him in person, I opened his comment and read it to him, ‘Webster’s Dictionary defines Maven as someone who is an expert in something, well that’s certainly not the case.’ It evolved from this place of ‘Oh my gosh, what have I done?’ to ‘What a great opportunity to make an alliance.’ I allowed myself to be corrected, and I apologized publicly, transforming the whole thing into a good experience that also taught me not to underestimate the power of participating on social media. Since my content was being syndicated, I certainly should have expected that the person running the blog would see it. The juxtaposition of my own misperception as ‘just a small company,’ and who cares what I say, to ‘Wow, the channel chief at this big company has just tuned in and is yelling at me,’ was equal parts humbling, and cool.

Okay, moving to the main focus of our discussion. For the benefit of our readers, can you explain why you are an authority about Social Media Marketing?

I wouldn’t say that I’m an authority on social media marketing. I’m an authority on social media marketing within the B2B space, which is very different.

When I started Channel Maven in 2009, people were still posting on Twitter about what they had eaten for breakfast. It was my job to educate my community about platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn to drive B2B revenues. Now, I’ve sort of become the person that this community turns to when they’re looking to decide whether to use a different medium. TikTok certainly is different. It started much the way Twitter did, with people just posting cute dogs and recipes and what not. And it’s evolved into more thought leadership and a great place to create video content. Whether you expect your audience to view it on TikTok, or you’re simply creating content on TikTok to share it elsewhere, the influence of the platform has grown considerably.

Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?

I would say LinkedIn. With more than 10,000 followers and connections, I sort of go through that list and use it to prospect, because that’s where most of my audience hangs out. LinkedIn is where I can simply post a piece of content and get swift responses or have people check-in with me.

Now for the main question of our interview, talking about TikTok specifically. Can you share five ways to leverage TikTok to improve your business? If you can, please share an example for each.

I really enjoy the filters on TikTok, and I like the time limits the platform provides, where you can now record for up to three minutes. By contrast, on Instagram, you can only create a one-minute video. So, if I’m talking about a piece of content or an event that I’m attending, having TikTok pre-timed ensures I’m not exceeding three minutes. People tune out by that point anyway. It’s important to remain true to those guardrails.

Strictly speaking about B2B, the first thing to do on TikTok is find your audience and see if they are spending time there. Engage with them on their own accounts, on the content they’re sharing, and the thought leadership that they post.

The next is to create your own content, and I’ll break this into three separate sub-sections:

Event-driven content. I might create a video to say, ‘Hey there, I’m at this event, and these are all the things you’re missing. Tune in to find out more.’ Or ‘This is how you should engage in this event in the future.’

Random thoughts that occur throughout my workday. For example, I’ve been talking a lot about ecosystem marketing and leveraging MDF. This is more educational, almost like a short form training.

Discussing content that already exists. For example, we’re launching a new eBook. My team will send me a synopsis of the eBook and I’ll create a TikTok video about that piece of content.

Finally, you want to be sure you’re leveraging other people’s content and responding or adding your own value to it. For example, someone creates a video on developing a channel go-to-market plan. I can share that, but then also respond to it or add my own professional advice and experience and share it on LinkedIn.

So, for me, TikTok is useful primarily for content creation, where I can ensure I’m leveraging the filter, good lighting, and the time limits so that my content is to task, succinct and looks great.

What would you say is the specific advantage that TikTok has over other social media platforms, like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook? Can you please explain with an example?

For me, my audience isn’t leveraging TikTok as a means for back-and-forth engagement, and yet, it’s a great place to create the content. I prefer to create a piece of content and share it to LinkedIn or Instagram, without needing to manage yet another social platform. I don’t feel I have to engage on TikTok. However, as I create these pieces of content every other week, I can immediately move it to LinkedIn or Instagram where I am actively managing relationships and making sure I am engaging with an audience. TikTok is a more user-friendly tool, (as I described in the prior answer) the video piece, filters #thankyou and being able to comment and add highlights or closed captioning is so much easier than on Instagram.

I didn’t create an Instagram account until I felt that I had enough connections or followers to engage on it. I didn’t feel there was that same bar to clear when I started on TikTok because it was really the content creation engine that I was leveraging to push out elsewhere. Using TikTok, I immediately started creating content, even with zero followers, and then pushed it out in other places. And that has helped me to draw more followers to TikTok. I think people see me on LinkedIn and see me on Instagram and then go, ‘Oh she’s on TikTok,” and follow me there, too.

Some critics say that since TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, it creates a risk to people in the US. How would you respond to that?

I think anywhere that you share content, you potentially open yourself to risk. I am very conscientious about what I create and share on TikTok. My children are not on TikTok. I keep it pretty focused on the things that I would say directly to, or in front of anyone. I would say I am pretty PG-13 on TikTok, and because of that, it doesn’t concern me at all. But certainly, when I notice other people posting things about their children or their families, or saying something negative, it gives me pause for them. I worry about the consequences they may encounter. I would just say be careful what you put out there. Once you post it, it’s out there forever.

Your position makes you a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that brings the most amount of good to the most people, what would it be? (You never know what your idea can trigger).

One thing that I’m passionate about is fighting childhood hunger. My husband and I actively support an organization in our community called The Chef Ann Foundation. So, I would like to create a program where kids can always have access to healthy food to feed their bodies and their brains, even when school is not in session. School is where many children receive their breakfast and lunch, and for some, those are their only meals of the day. During the pandemic, when schools shut down, they didn’t have food.

A good friend of mine used to be an executive at Whole Foods, and she’s now CEO at The Chef Ann Foundation. They have figured out how to take the minimal lunch budget that schools are given and provide real, whole, healthy foods like salad and grilled chicken and hummus with carrots instead of frozen, unbalanced options. It’s amazing how little people know about what they’re putting in their children’s mouths, and how it affects attention span and brain development. It’s eye-opening, for sure.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she may see this if we tag them.

There are two. The first is a former boss, David Skok. I could probably pick up the phone and connect with him anytime, but you don’t know who you are rubbing elbows with until you grow up, and you find yourself working for a medium-sized SaaS company and that person is referenced in a strategy session. He is an expert in SaaS, investing, and all-around great human.

The other one is former First Lady Michelle Obama. I know that sounds trite or cliché. Her ability to take criticism, both to her face and behind her back, and just be so calm and graceful in those situations is something that I admire. I need to learn how to do that better. And she is passionate about healthy food and childhood hunger. There’s a book called Parker Looks Up, and it’s the story of a little girl walking through the National Portrait Gallery in DC, and she’s skipping through the halls and looking at all the different paintings, when suddenly she stops dead in her tracks and looks up. And she’s standing in front of the portrait of Michelle Obama, with that patchwork dress on. My girls were 3 and 5 at the time they read the story, and for it to have such an impact on them, it illustrated for me how when you are passionate about caring for other people, you have extraordinary influence.

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening, and we wish you only continued success.