Turning TikTok into a Career
Learn the basics of social media marketing, from Facebook to Instagram, in our next Crash Course led by 2020 grad Caky Winsett. Check out our interview with Caky to learn more about the course.
How did your time at Forge (formerly HackCville) help prepare you for what you’re doing now?
I think HackCville was more helpful than really anything else I did at UVA: I was on the trips team, and my job on the trips team from the very beginning was to find people on LinkedIn that I did not know but had some connection to via UVA or Daniel [Willson] cause Daniel knows everyone, and then reach out to them over email and say “Hello, we were wondering if we could come visit your office, pretty please.” And once I started looking for jobs, I realized that the best way to get people to actually look at your job application is to do the same thing except instead of saying “Can we come visit your office?” you say “Can you tell me more about the job opportunities within your company?” So HackCville basically taught me everything about networking.
I also took Storyboard- I took it as a first year and that taught me basic editing skills that I didn’t have, and I was able to turn that into a couple of internships actually. So while I was at UVA I did several internships with post-production because of the skills I learned at HackCville, so again HackCville was really helpful in preparing me for jobs.
What are some of the specific skills people will learn in your Crash course?
The big things that I’ll be focusing on are how to identify the voice of a social media page because every social media page has its own voice, even if you don’t think it does, and then making sure that you’re creating content that matches that voice even if you’re not creating all of the content, so for a lot of companies they have 5 or 6 social media managers, so it’s not just you. If it’s just you it’s pretty easy, but it’s usually not, so you have to be able to work on the team and communicate and say this is my idea: how can we as a group integrate that idea into our overall plan. And that’s the third big thing is making a long term social media plan. Because if you work in social media marketing at any company, they’re gonna ask you to plot out every social media post for a month, at least. I even worked one internship that asked for a plan for the whole summer.
What social networks will be covered and how much social media expertise is expected going into this course?
I mainly work with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and now TikTok […] so those are the main four that most companies want you to work with. A social media manager also sometimes will run the website, but that’s a whole nother world, and I’ll probably mention it but not really get into it because it’s a whole different thing. But those are the big four that are used in America. If you were trying to be a social media manager NOT in America, WeChat is gonna be your best friend. But we’re in America and I don’t use WeChat, so we’re not gonna talk about that one. But those ones [Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok] will be the main ones we cover.
I’ll also try to give a general overview of how those skills are transferrable. So say tomorrow someone releases a new app called “PixiePets”, and your entire job is to make a social media account where you’re pretending to be a dog- that way you can turn your marketing strategies so they work on this new site.
In the course description, I noticed you mentioned TikTok; is TikTok becoming a respected social media? Or more specifically how do you think that form of social media can be used for businesses?
There’s two ways that companies use TikTok: some companies buy ads on TikTok, but they don’t buy ads that look like a commercial on your TV; they buy an ad that looks like a TikTok. So you’re scrolling, and you’re not gonna know that you’re watching an ad, until halfway through when suddenly someone like Charli D’Amelio says “and that’s why I eat Cheerios!” And then the other method is just to make accounts. BarkBox does this really well. They have a group of college students basically running their tiktok account and they pick up on viral trends and make them about BarkBox. So those are the two main methods, but companies are definitely getting into it. They all try to do it in a way that matches the TikTok platform, which is important so that you never feel like you’re watching an ad; you feel like you’re watching a TikTok that just so happens to have sponsorship.
What main takeaways do you want people to have from the course?
I think the biggest thing is that social media marketing is what businesses use to act like people. You see a lot of companies- like Wendy’s twitter account is especially great at this- but people are more likely to buy your product, use your service, etc if your social media marketing makes your 500,000 person company, sound like one person. So it’s your job in social media marketing to personify the company. And that can be super fun because you kind of get to “make” the person; you can make them sassy or nice or bubbly or whatever, but as long as you know that you’re making a big company into one person, and that’s your end goal, you’re going to be able to do it pretty well.
What is your favorite form of social media and why?
For the longest time it was Snapchat, but now I think it’s TikTok because I was a really big Vine kid, but I was a big Vine kid after it had already died, so to be able to actively participate in essentially the newest version of Vine is exciting. And I also just think that TikTok does what every social media app tries to do which is it figures out who you as an individual person are and specializes to your needs to an extreme level. It’s a little scary [privacy-wise], but it’s also really good for marketing purposes.
What is the #1 reason why you’d recommend someone try your course?
I will teach you how to make money from making TikToks! That’s the pitch!
If you’re interested in Caky’s Social Media Marketing Crash Course, you can sign up now on the Forge site.
