How to Use TikTok's Verified Business Account Features and Local Feed

Some big TikTok changes, including TikTok has new verified business accounts. They're free to set up. I think they're planning on making a business account better than it has been. People are searching more on TikTok than ever before. They're searching for their place to eat, their place to go out at night. And so oftentimes it's like the, one of the easiest things to do if you're out with your friends and you're like, where can we go get dumplings? And you're like, go to dumpling house. And then there's that feature where you can literally go to the maps. That's an easy way for people to be able to get to where they wanna get to versus leaving the app and doing this, doing that. When we love something, all we do is talk about it. All these local businesses are seeing what is happening, how businesses are blowing up, because people are talking about it on TikTok. And the easier they make it to for people to get to them, the better it is for that business. So we're very excited to be joined by Keenya Kelly Keenya is a TikTok and Instagram reels expert and runs a social media agency and also host the, if you created podcast today, Keenya, Mike and I are gonna explore what these latest updates from TikTok mean for small business marketers and owners like you. Kenia, welcome back to the show. Yay. Thank you so much for having me. So let's jump into these verified business accounts. Now, the first thing that caught my eye when I saw this was, oh, this is a free thing that's interesting with all of the paid verification that we've seen. But what it does is it ties an organic TikTok account to a real business and category, which is supposed to help TikTok apply specific rules and features. Um, also makes it so that they can apply specific safeguards like age gating, uh, geofencing if your business is not supposed to be in certain areas. Um, especially for brands that are in some restricted verticals like gambling and healthcare. And then also if you register as one of these, it unlocks additional organic capabilities, including having a link in your bio before you have, what is it, a thousand followers you have to have before you get the link in bio. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, so you would get that now instead of having to wait lead generation from your profile destination downloads like for map directions, app download links, organic geotargeting, multi-user login for account management, which is huge for agency people. So all of these different things. But Kenia, I have to ask you first, and you're obviously on Instagram as well, it's been long reported by marketers that switching to a business profile on Instagram has reduced their reach compared to like the creator and the personal profiles. So do you see this happening on TikTok? And basically if I don't see an immediate benefit for any of those additional features, would you recommend setting this up? Yeah, so it has always been a thing on TikTok where if you have a, if you switch to a business account versus, versus a personal, you get a lot less reach. of those like commercial features, like the audios and stuff like that. So for the longest time, since I've been on TikTok for five years, I've never encouraged my audience to have a business account unless they have a physical product. 'cause they're trying to set up a TikTok shop. But I think that tiktoks goal is, they understand that now there's a the American component to it and they've got to really drive businesses to the platform. So do I still think you're gonna get better reach as a creator account? Yes. But do I think businesses are gonna have way more feature that they don't have never had before? Yes. So if there's an essential feature, it sounds like you're thinking, you know, it's worth it. Like let's say people want directions, your local business, then that direction button alone could be well worth the reduction in reach. Yeah, exactly. Because if you think about what's happening now, like people are searching more on TikTok than ever before. And then there's that feature where you can literally go to the maps and go like, and just get on. It's like that's an easy way for people to be able to get to where they wanna get to versus leaving the app and doing this, doing that. So it's definitely a good feature. Ken, you said something kind of important that, uh, some of our audience might have missed, which is now that it's an American company, right? I mean, like, it, it just kind of like doubled down on that a little bit because there was an exchange that happened. Just give people kind of a quick update if they've not been paying attention to TikTok in a little while. I'll just kind of zoom in on that just a little bit more. Yeah. Thank God there is somebody upstairs. Um, so for the last five years the government has been saying, TikTok is bad, you gotta sell it or what have you. And then just a couple months ago they officially signed the deal, it's Oracle and some other companies partnered together for a TikTok, uh, USA version. I think Byan still owns 15%, but for the most part it's owned by, uh, an American company. And so now all of our data, all everything, there's so much advertising happening right now and they're trying to of course drive more American businesses to the platform right now. So just to be clear, what Jerry was talking about earlier is that on Instagram, when you upgrade to this kind of business account, um, you're, you're telling me Kenia that you feel like you are going to get less reach because didn't you just say, Jerry

that you're gonna get more reach in this particular situation? No, no less reach if you switch to the business. And then that's what Kenia said is also true on TikTok. Mm-hmm. Okay. So do we know this to be true or is this just kind of been the dreams? We know it to be true. So the last five years I've worked with thousands of business owners and I never have them have a business account. I always creator slash personal account. Unless nowadays, if they have products in TikTok shop, then they, you must have a business account in order to sell on TikTok shop. If you want to collect leads through their lead form, you have to have a business account. So does this mean that for those people that are already on TikTok and they maybe want to have a business account tied to their personal account somehow, some way, I mean, what's the, what's the use case I guess is where I'm getting at here? I mean, I don't know what, like why would you do this? Um, I think because, uh, I think what TikTok is, is planning on doing is I think they're planning on making a business account better than it has been. 'cause there already is the, how we feel about switching to a business account. We don't wanna do it. And so tiktoks job is to make it way more appealing to why someone would do it. So I think that if I had to guess, I don't know if this would be true, I think they're going to help the algorithm from not allowing people to get as much reach, which would entice them to have a business account there. Right now that's still not the case. Um, but I think that the goal is to entice them to do that because they've gotta have more advertisers, so on and so on. Okay. Well and to what you said Keenya, people are going on there to search for dumplings or whatever else it might be. So it almost feels like it's, this is your Yelp listing, this is your Google business listing. Is that how you see it? Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, 'cause I didn't realize the power of, um, geotargeting on TikTok until I moved back to Houston from San Diego and built a massive Houston community just by tagging. And so I could see why a local business who never used to advertise on TikTok, why they would have this business account there to have all these features. Because when, when we love something, all we do is talk about it. All these local businesses are seeing what is happening, how businesses are blowing up, because people are talking about it on TikTok. And the easier they make it to for people to get to them, the better it is for that business. So you've uh, spoken at social media marketing world many times, you're a listener of the show. I would love to know of the, I'm gonna recap the features here that you get with this account. I would love to know which ones you think our audience would benefit most from. So one of them was the Lincoln Bio without having to have the thousand followers. Another one was lead generation from your profile, which I assume is maybe a built-in form. Is that Yeah, I haven't seen it in action, but is that what that is? Yeah, it's called Service Plus. So there's two version of service plus one is if you have a business account and you are doing live streams, um, there's a little box that pops up. And then let's just say someone wants to join a, a challenge or something that I'm doing. If, uh, there's a box that pops up that says, Hey, if you wanna join my challenge, just put your name and and email address in. Well, but it's gonna autopopulate them. So if you have that service plus speech, it's gonna autopopulate them into, into the form. And they're also making it easier to be able to export those people. That's the business account service plus. But if you have a creator account service plus I can, the box will pop up and it'll say, Hey, if you wanna join my challenge d uh, comment the word challenge here in this box. And if they comment the word challenge, it'll send a DM directly into my inbox. But I still have to, I pull for them to get their name and their email address to do the follow ups. Yeah, put them into your email software Yeah. And everything like that. Okay. Mm-hmm. Interesting. 'cause they wanna keep 'em on TikTok. Of course. So, all right, so we have Link bio lead generation from your profile, uh, the destination link, which will be a maps link app, download links, the organic geotargeting, and then multi-user login. So if you were to pick two of those that you think would make it most worth, essentially giving up some of your reach, it sounds like, uh, and switching, which ones would you say would be? Um, I would definitely say the lead form. And then I would say the, the mapping. Um, I think one of the things that they're, they're gonna do, 'cause like right now if I tag, if I tag Houston, everybody in Houston sees my content. Uh, and I always forget that when people on the street are like, Hey, I know you. And I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot. Um, but I think that one of the features that they're gonna, that they're gonna add, I think that they're gonna do like some recommendations. So like, let's just say I searched for dumplings in Montrose. I think that because I searched for that, it's gonna then show me dumplings in this area, in this area. So I think a business would really benefit from that because people are searching for what they're searching for more than ever, and they're looking for more, uh, options. Yeah, and one of the features too, it said was to, you know, by setting this up, then you're less likely to get in trouble by having alcohol content reach somebody under 21 or healthcare, you know, some of these different industries. And I remember when I worked at an agency, like, we had to watch all of this stuff like a hawk on all of the platforms. So do you think just in your, you know, vast experience on TikTok, do you think some of these highly regulated industries have more freedom organically on TikTok compared to other platforms?

And will this make this better or potentially worse? Um, I don't think that they have more freedom right now. 'cause I think that TikTok has been under such scrutiny by the United States government that they had to like restrict, like cred crazily heavily down. But I think that now they are going to, with this new business feature, it's gonna allow businesses, breweries, bars or whatever to be able to market in a way because that content will not reach people that are underage because they're gonna, 'cause when you, when they're creating these profile, it'll say, this is for this particular age demographic. And I think that there's gonna help with pushing that content. Like for me, if I do a live stream, nobody under 18 can come into my live stream because I literally have turned that on. And I think that's gonna help business to be able to, to market all the things they want to market when you can't market to kids. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, social media has always been known, you know, I think there's still some, uh, small businesses that still have this reluctance to put too much time into it. 'cause it's like, well, it reaches people everywhere and I'm just a local business. Like, I dunno about the two of you. I assume you also hear that objection quite a bit from certain audiences. Yeah. So this next TikTok feature, I was playing with it a little before we came on, and I think it's gonna be pretty astonishing what it could do for local businesses. So they're calling it the local feed, and the goal is to boost neighborhood discovery. And you know, we're coming, we're back to the dumplings again, like Kenia was talking about. Yeah. But basically like you have a four you tab, you have a STEM tab, and those different tabs at the top of TikTok, now there's gonna be one that's just called local and it's supposed to be all nearby content businesses and events based on your user location, content topic and recency. So I, I wanna share it in a second what I saw on there, because it wasn't exactly my dream, but I can see the potential. But tell, tell me your initial reaction to a feature like this Keenya. I think it's amazing, um, because I think that for the longest time that people couldn't advertise their local things because you're going to a, uh, an international market, which isn't a bad thing, but if you're trying to reach your local people, you're not trying to drive that, that attention. So you don't wanna spend time on the platform. But I think this is huge for local businesses because for me personally, I'm not from here and I'm always looking for what are great things I can do in Houston, or if I go to Dallas, what can I do in those areas? And it literally can feed me all the things that I may wanna experience, but probably it's gonna give advertisers an opportunity to like have their ads placed a higher locally or like, just in the, in the local feed. And not just in the, not in the main for you page, but literally to their local audience. Um, I think it's a great feature as a user, um, as a consumer, but also as a business. I, when I opened it up, when we planned this show, I didn't have it yet, but I, right before we started, I opened it up to see what there and the top six posts, this is why I think there's incredible opportunity for local businesses. The top six posts, three of them were about Costco, not a local business. And uh, and, but maybe they, they must have been tagged somewhere locally, I'm assuming two of them were from real estate agents. So there is potential. Now, full disclosure, I live in an area outside of Tucson, Arizona. It's not a giant massive city. It's not like being in Houston or, or Nashville or, or New York City or anything like that. But I do think it sounds like there's a lot of potential here for local businesses to capitalize just like when any new feature comes out. Yeah, I think it's gonna be massive. Like I, I am really excited for the local businesses because I know the power of TikTok so many businesses, their lives have changed because somebody came into their restaurant, somebody bought a cookie, somebody bought a croissant, and it sent the whole city into that area and they haven't been able to capitalize on it the way that they could. But now they don't have to rely on somebody coming in from outside. They can be doing their own thing, their own influencers from their bars or restaurants or local influencers to really help them drive traffic to their events or nonprofit things or whatever it is that they're doing locally. You know, I have a couple questions about this. Um, this isn't turned off by default, right? So like how does TikTok get people to turn the darn thing on? Because if you don't know that it exists, then what good is it? You understand what I'm saying? Like mm-hmm. Do they, do they intentionally, I don't know how, how's that gonna work? What's your thoughts on that, Keenya? Yeah, so TikTok is very smart and I like to credit myself for some of this just because I had a call with them. Um, one of the things that TikTok was trying to do was they were trying to figure out how to get people to check on the things we're trying to get them to check onto. And they brought me on a call and I said, well, why don't you make it to where the notification does not go away until they open it. And so now what happens is that when TikTok has this new feature and they've, they, they alert you every time there's something new, that thing comes out to you and you cannot get that notification to move. It will not move until you open it. They also send way more emails. Like right now they've been really trying to capture people's email addresses and they're sending out notifications on your, like on your page. So if you're, like, if they're just trying to highlight something on the feed, those ads will run on your feed and you can't get past them.

So like there's this new thing now where if you run an ad on TikTok and depends on, I think it's the level of pay, but if you try to scroll away from it, it won't move for like three or four seconds. Uh, it just stays there till, and then it'll go after like four or five seconds. And I think that tiktoks gonna be doing more of that when it comes to them trying to get businesses to utilize these different features. But they literally alert you of it. They don't automatically turn it on for you, but they alert you of it. Or sometimes they say new feature is available, uh, once you do an update, but most times they give you the opportunity to um, to add it on. I wonder, I wonder if it could be smart enough to say, Hey, you seem to be interested in local content. Do you wanna toggle this feature on? Right? Because if they're noticing that you're searching for restaurants or whatever in your area, you know, that'd be kind of cool. And maybe you only want it on for a period of time too, right? Let's say you're visiting Anaheim, California for a social media marketing world and keep it on for a week, right? I mean, yeah, that would be kind of interesting. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if they do that because that is a feature with TikTok Shop now. So if I do a video and I'm talking about this Elf lipstick, right? It's sensitive, it knows I got, I'm talking about this Elf lipstick and when I go to put in my caption it, you will see product and it's asking me, do you wanna tag that product in TikTok shop? So I would not be surprised if it's gonna give that same feature to local businesses to say, do you wanna tag this particular area? Because that's like anytime I post content, I can see it says locations. Do you wanna tag where you are in Houston? It's like automatic, it's there and I click, yeah, I click local Houston, or I click local San Diego. You know, it's interesting you brought that Mike the privacy thing because I don't think I hopped it in. And so now I'm wondering, 'cause I remember reading it originally, but 20 minutes before the show I said, oh, let's, I was reviewing the notes. I was like, let me see if I have this there. And there it is. Now one thing that they have said, it's not supposed to be on like automatically and it's gonna be rolling out gradually across the us and whether you have it or not, we'll depend on whether or not you have, uh, have given TikTok access to your precise location. And I tried to find that in my settings. I wasn't able to find it right away, but it maybe I don't have a precise location, that's why it was half Costco and half houses in Phoenix. But um, they do say that, you know, when it's off, TikTok will not collect that precise GPS location. So they are obviously trusting the privacy, which is a big thing. Uh, and I think it's important with new ownership. But I wanna ask you Kenia, like based on your knowledge of the TikTok algorithm, like what's the best way to let TikTok know, Hey, this is where my content belongs. Like is it a location sticker? Is it verbally saying the name of the place that you're in? Neighborhoods, streets? All of the above. Yeah. So I feel like because this, because when I moved back to Houston, I was like, I wanna build a community. So I created a new account on TikTok and I was like, well, let me just ta let me just start tagging Houston in my content. As I tagged the Houston location. Then I started saying Houston, Texas as text on screen also was just saying Houston. Uh, but in addition to that, because you have the limit of five hashtags, I was used to using Houston hashtags like my area's called Montrose or maybe the Woodlands. And what I found is that literally everybody that is watching my content when it's about Houston is in Houston. Um, and I know that because I created one video talking about this area called Sugar Land. And it was a really funny video about people who won't get outside because they live in Sugar Land and I just put hashtag Sugar Land, everyone that was commenting lived in Sugar Land. And I was like, oh my God. So it's like, it, eventually it starts to learn who you are, but if you really wanna do it, tag the location, use one or two hashtags, and then texts on screen Hashtags, like are you telling me hashtags are still alive and well? Oh Yeah. Live and kicking. 'cause They're not, they're not on the other platforms is my understanding, right Jerry? Yeah. Isn't that true? Yeah. Instagram was sort of the, the last one where they were sort of relevant. And even Instagram has been limiting now and I think we're down to five, four or five that you're allowed to have. They Got from TikTok. TikTok went down to five and the Instagram went down to five, which is smart. Yeah. So they said, um, one of the things that they said was this local feed algorithm is gonna choose content partially based on recency. So if a local business or marketer is listening to this and like, okay, we're gonna get in, we're gonna get on in this, how often do you think they need to post so that they always feel like they have something recent available? Like is once a week enough? Yeah, so one of the things I always tell people is that we oftentimes feel the pressure to post a lot, whether it's on TikTok, Instagram or wherever, but we have to get into a, a regular rhythm, right? And I tell every business owner, focus on one great piece of content per week and that content you're putting out and you're also engaging on the platform. So don't just post and go. So if you're gonna do once a week, post that great content, you know, respond to people on comments, go to and actually talk to people in, in different, you know, um, on different pages and stuff like that. And if you can get to two a week, once a day, that's great. But minimum that one piece once a week is

is recency enough. But they do wanna see you actively on the platform. commenting back to your people. They do wanna see you talking to other people on different, different accounts and stuff. And it also benefits you anyway as a business. 'cause you're all in the comments that's like, you know, have you guys familiar with the Dr. Pepper thing? Yeah. So there's a, there's a girl who just loves Dr. Pepper and she, she makes jingles and she has her whole life. And one day she got on and was like, Dr. Pepper, I wrote a song for you Dr. Pepper, baby, it is good and nice, do, do. And of course she did, right? And in the whole world, people, all these people that make music started making actual jingles out of the sound. Photographers and editors started making, making actual commercials out of the sound. As a result, she's got the biggest commercial where they actually redid the jingle, then she got a deal with Vita Coco, they took her to the Super Bowl Hyundai on day. All of them. All because of that. Huh. Do you think somebody strategized that or do you think it was truly organic? I organic because like when you, when you listen to her and you watch her how her content has been, that's just how she is. And she just kind of just was doing this thing and it took off. Um, so then other people decided like, I'm gonna do a jingle too. Like I'm thinking about Hidden Valley Ranch. I won't sing it, but it's like the funniest Hidden Valley Ranch song ever. She got picked up Vaseline, all these people are now script. They're doing it on purpose. But the brands, if a brand is only there once a week posting one piece of content, but they're actively engaging on the platform, it, it changes everything, you know, for them. You know, like, what was that? I think it was JetBlue nothing. Beat a JetBlue holiday. Remember that? Y'all know that sound? No, but it's this huge sound. It is this lady, she just says nothing beats a JetBlue holiday and right now. But people took the sound and turned it into something else as if they were c catastrophic situations. Jet blew up. But they also allowed themselves to play into it by just commenting, blew up in a good way. By the way, we should clarify. You don't mean blew up. Oh, sorry. Right. Exploded in such a great way. So if you come on TikTok and you say, nothing beats a JetBlue, everybody's gonna finish the sentence. And they didn't have to create the content. They had their one piece that was regular and then they were engaging with people on the platform. Dr. Pepper did that by Coco Chipotle, all of them. So, and to clarify, when I, when, you know, if I find out that somebody planned something that's designed to look organic, like my reaction is not like, oh, they planned that. My reaction is, oh, good marketing, right? I'm all, yeah, I'm all for it. But I know on the consumer side, sometimes there's a lot more, uh, you know, skepticism around that. So we're talking about this new local feed on TikTok and I'm curious to know, like what suggestions would you have or what should marketers know about, you know, if they're trying to figure out how to measure the impact of posting more localized content mm-hmm. Beyond just views, right? Views is good, local views is good, but if somebody was going to promote something, like, would it be worth them mentioning a secret word that people can come in and redeem? Or is that potentially gonna backfire if they're, if it gets too much reach? Or how, like how would you advise somebody on that? Yeah, so I would definitely tell a business to have a secret word, have a secret, uh, have a secret drink. They had to come in and order or a secret, um, ranch or whatever. Um, because most times people won't be able to see what has happened from TikTok until the, the video blows up or the video does a lot of views. But if everybody's coming in, all they're ordering is the Arnold Palmer. But with Raspberry Lemonade, you know exactly where this came from. You know, that's kind of like what happened with chilies. Like, I dunno if you know about this, but Chili's launched this mozzarella sticks, Nashville hot mozzarella sticks. I don't like mozzarella sticks, I don't like cheese like that. But somebody went to Chili's and got their, uh, it's called the Triple Dipper multiple items. And they were like showcasing the mozzarella sticks and the cheese. It just pulled out, everyone started going to Chili's just to do what they call the cheese pool chilies didn't even have an account on TikTok. So they knew what happened when everybody was coming in to get the mozzarella sticks. And so eventually some of the local branches started creating accounts on TikTok and they're all doing this cheese bowl thing, changed their life forever, have it to McDonald's too. So we've got this local feed now and you're saying mention locations, tag locations. Should non-local businesses consider tagging locations in their content? Yeah, so if they are, if you're trying to get people in a certain location, yes, but if you're not, if you're not focused on a specific location, I wouldn't do that because it, you're, you're telling, you're telling TikTok this is who we are and who we're targeting. So I wouldn't do that. Like I don't tag Houston in my main TikTok account. I do it in my fun influencer account because I wanna reach everybody on that account. But what if you're at an event, right? Like a huge event like, um, south by Southwest or something like that. That's where you would do something like that, right? Oh yeah, For sure. So like when I start posting content on TikTok

when I'm at Social Media Marketing World, I will tag Anaheim When I'm at Disney out there, I will tag Disney Anaheim and it will reach people in that particular area. Perfect. Okay. Alright. So, um, obviously all of the platforms have been rolling out new AI tools and TikTok shop is no exception. And I wanna just go through these one by one Keenya and get your reaction and thoughts to each one of these. So, uh, the first thing is the ability to, um, have AI dubbing. So you can make faster videos by generating scripts, voices and lip sync narration from product info. You can use generic voices or a synthetic version of your own voice if you are the business owner or the face of the business or anything like that. And so basically the way it works is you upload a short product video and you select your product and I guess it'll give you a script, you review it, then you say, use my voice or use, uh, an, a synthetic voice and then start lip sync and off it goes. Mm-hmm. I think it's amazing. I think that it is a really creative way for businesses and brands to create content promoting their products and services. I think it's also a really smart part on tiktoks part of getting product-based businesses to, to create content because not everybody has someone to film. Not everybody understands influencers or UGC content creation, but if I have this water bottle and a series of them and all I have to do is do the script and the product like, and what AI is able to do, I will post content every single day and then I will run those as ads as a business because I'm like, I don't have to do as much work that I used to. Well, and I might be getting this mixed up, but I'm pretty sure that, um, the parent company that originally founded TikTok has some incredible AI technology that they have come out with, I think it's called Seed. Seed dance. Seed Dance, yeah, exactly. So my guess is they're applying this technology here. Is that what's going on Keenya? I think so. I saw it come out, so I downloaded it, but I haven't played with it yet. Um, but yeah, I really think so. Like I've seen so many AI videos on, um, TikTok of like, um, product-based business. So I saw someone promoting like a lip balm and the video was great, it was so good. And at the bottom it said this is AI generated. I could not believe it, but it was all done on the TikTok app. So good. Wow. And, and they're investing so much in TikTok shop right now. So the next one it basically, you know, if you have, uh, you know, uh, clothing or anything like that, you know, no models, no problem. Basically you can take your product photos and they'll turn them into shoppable videos with ai, with natural voiceovers. Uh, I I'm assuming this is how they're limiting the use of the ai. You can have 45 new poses daily and 20 new templates, uh, weekly. And right now this is available for men's wear and women's wear when you go in and set this up just from taking your product videos and they'll turn 'em into these things with models. Yeah. And it's, it's really cool. Like I saw, I saw a video of a girl with freckles that, um, in ai, I mean it was done very nicely. And I think that it's smart on the businesses part because one, they don't have to have the models, but also if it's in TikTok shop and uh, if they two things, if they're using TikTok shop fulfillment, then they don't have to do fulfilling. 'cause TikTok has that new fulfillment center that they open. Uh, but also TikTok makes money every time you're selling a product. So it's in their best interest to let you do as many videos as possible so you can advertise your products because TikTok makes their piece and then you make a significant amount over that. Uh, I guess the national question is where do we get to try around with these tools? I mean, it sounds like these are all ad related tools. Um, is that correct or not Correct. Like where can we mess around with this? Do you know? Can you, They're all business related tools. So you just have to have a business account on TikTok and anybody can do that. You can literally create a brand new account on TikTok, choose business account and then you'll see what they give you access to. Um, but also they have like their, I they think it's TikTok Newsroom, you can kind of see them playing around with the different things. But most times all the features roll out at different times. So I don't think that every company that has clothing in TikTok shop has it right now. I think they're definitely testing a few people here and there and then it'll continue to like, go out like the local feed. I don't have that. Jerry has it. Um, but like, yeah. Okay. So this is really intriguing because anybody who listens to my other show, uh, AI explored, knows that a lot of these features and functionalities like the, the concept of an AI model that's not a real human. Um, you, there's tools out there you can use like Mid Journey for example. Mm-hmm. And the idea of AI actors, which is not something we're talking about here, but we're kind of implying a little bit, uh, is coming. And it's kind of fascinating to think that anybody who has a product but does not feel comfortable enough creating professional photo shots or even professional hiring actors and stuff like that or models can now do this stuff. Like the barriers to actually taking the product to market now have greatly been removed.

And it's pretty fascinating, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And even if a company does have access to it, it's, it's cutting their marketing like spending way down because like now you can use, I mean it sounds bad for the person that was getting paid for it, but it's also like the company doesn't have to spend all that money anymore 'cause they're literally able to do a lot of that on the inside of TikTok. That's incredible. So let me ask you this, 'cause while we're on this topic, are there any other generative AI tools that you are using on TikTok yourself right now that we should be thinking about? That's like something that most people probably already have and may not even know is there because they're still following the same routine they were a year ago? I don't think so. I'm, I'm not right now. Uh, I'm learning more of their AI tools. I haven't really done, done a whole lot with them. Um, but with this new update, I'm, uh, I'm creating a new business account just so I can play with all the different features. But there isn't anything I'm personally doing 'cause I'm doing the creator account more than the business accounts. Uh, one, one of the things I hear from a lot of the video creators that I get on my other show is that SOA two from open AI is ridiculously good for creating really good scripted ads content that is really cinematic. That is kind of like, like if anybody's ever downloaded the SOA two app, it looks fantastical a lot of the stuff that's on there, but you can actually use it to create stuff in your own likeness and your, and, and actually stuff that's really, really quite effective. Mm. So what a lot of creators are doing is they're going over, they're, they're experimenting with SOA two and then they're exporting those videos out and publishing those as tiktoks and Wow, Okay. I'll look into that. Yeah, it's an extra step, but it'll probably, you know, it'll all be integrated soon enough, most likely. So, yeah, exactly. Um, a couple of other features here with AI and TikTok shop one list with AI where it'll instantly generate product listings from a photo in a brief description, including optimizing for search, which is incredible. Although I don't know how you optimize for search if everybody's optimizing for search with the same AI tool. Like I said, everybody's sort of optimized for search, but, and then this was I think one of the most interesting things, a CRM tool that will allow sellers to send personalized messages and offers based on customer behavior. So like an abandoned cart, they can send a one time or an automated campaign option. Um, it looks like it's free to use if you have TikTok shop. And it all depends on, they have something called a shop performance score. SPS as long as your score is high enough, basically you're running a legit store and you get access to this. So this is, um, I guess my first thought with this was just thinking, I mean, obviously it sounds like an incredible opportunity to be able to automate DMS to people, but I guess I'm kind of surprised they're letting this happen for free. 'cause normally on most platforms, if you're gonna privately DM somebody who hasn't explicitly opted in, you're paying for an ad or something. Yeah, well I think that, uh, well first it's giving, it's making people want to advertise on TikTok, right? Because even though we all know TikTok, the business community, I don't feel like has really, really taken to TikTok invested a lot of money there because they were talking about banning it for five years, right? And I think this is tiktoks way up. Well, you know, it's kinda like with Mark Zuckerberg at first we had all these amazing free things we could do on Facebook and we were like, yeah, and then they charged us for it. So I wouldn't be surprised if TikTok has taken that same route of like, give them everything, get them here, and then eventually slowly charge for this or charge for that, which is, I think is a smart thing. But also every time a sale is made on TikTok shop, TikTok gets a percentage. It's small, but they get a percentage of everything. And the more people that they're able to get out of the abandoned carts, which we all love, and then Shopify loves TikTok is like, well, they're already doing it here, here and here. We should do that as well. And I guarantee you all the sellers have been having conversations with TikTok saying, Hey, here is what we need. Like, I just got a message from TikTok, I think it was last week, and they emailed me and was like, Hey, we know you're a course creator. What are some of the things that we're missing for course creators? And I was just like telling them all the things that we need. And you know, like, y'all wanna take 50% and you need to take 20. You can't take 50. And so like having all the conversations, they're making all these right changes. So I think a lot of the stuff that we're seeing is coming from the sellers, it's coming from the business owners that TikTok is saying, okay, let's adopt that, that, that. But I don't think they wanted to put all that investment in until they knew that they could operate in America, because America's one of the biggest markets for TikTok and now they're like, go time. So that's why we're seeing this big influx of features you feel like is because of the transition. Oh yeah. I've been so, like, I'm not a, obviously I'm a new quote unquote marketer, but I've been just watching it for the last five years. I was like, the dms are gonna open the chat bot's gonna happen. I'm like, 'cause it doesn't make sense for them not to have all these things that all the other platforms have because how are you gonna compete if they all have these features that you don't have? And so tiktoks job is to keep a, keep a stake in the marketplace, but you can't, if business owners are not having the success they wanna have, you know, like I feel like TikTok exploded because of COVID, but they weren't ready for it because

'cause nobody was, and they weren't ready for the business owners to come there, but we all showed up there and they had to like hurry and change so many things about their business and their model that, you know, it seems like they're doing a lot right now. But the truth is, I think that they've been trying to build this for a while and then launched out when the time was right. Yeah. Now, one friction point I know for a lot of marketers and business owners is still getting into that world of working with influencers to help spread the word about their messages. And you shared some incredible examples, some of them organic as we've talked today, Keenya, but another thing they've added is what they're calling creator picks. So you can find affiliates. So basically it will highlight high performing creators recommended by TikTok shop. So if you are selling in TikTok shop, it'll basically sort of endorse qualified affiliate partners. This is really neat, and I don't feel like we've seen anything like this on any other platform. There's been more matching that's happened on, like, YouTube has a a, a platform where you can, you know, brand connect where you can connect with people. Yeah. But this will be really interesting to see where this goes. Do you feel like this is gonna lower the barrier for affiliate marketing or influencer marketing? I think it's already been happening, but I think that just now talking about it in the public, because over the last, uh, year or two years, you've got TikTok shop creators and that this is all they do for work and they're making millions of dollars for the businesses and for themselves. And they, they have, they have ranks now, so it's like you can't see their rank, but in the back end there's a ranking for how well this person does with their content, how well this seller does. And I think that businesses have already been able to like capitalize on, okay, this creator sells this much and they're already sending products to, um, those particular people. I just think that now they're gonna broaden out even more because there's way more people now that are TikTok shop affiliate creators on the platform. Um, so again, I think it's tiktoks way of saying, all right, more businesses bring your products to the platform and we've got this database of creators who are rock stars and you gotta pay them a little bit more percentage, but this is their results that they get and all that Well, and the AI is gonna know if you bought likes or bought follows or, or you know, the comments are, you know, AI generated, like it's gonna know better than anybody or Yeah, but Here's the deal, it's not even about that. It's not about the likes or any of that. It's all about like what they call a GMV or something like that. I'm not a big creator TikTok shop creator, but it's like, if I get this, this thing from, from TikTok shop for free as a sample, and I'm promoting it on the back end of my account, I can see how many views I got to this, how many sales I got for this. And so can TikTok and TikTok shop? And so when they're looking at, she sells out everything she gets or she, this is the nu the numbers, she gets that thing. That's how they're ranking people. And then when they go to the brand, they're like, this person, like nine times outta 10 does X, Y, and Z. Nothing about views. It's all about the sales that are happening on the backend for that creator. I like that. Yeah. Uh, GMV is a gross merchandise value. That's the abbreviation that you use for that. So basically how many sales did you get? So wow, that's really powerful. So all of these new AI tools, but TikTok is also like all of the platforms cracking down on AI to make sure that people are not misusing it or misleading people. So already now TikTok requires people to label realistic AI generated content. Um, but they've also got these behind the scenes tools to identify AI content. And I thought this was interesting. You know, we all know AI content is exploding and AI is exploding everywhere, but I said over 1. 3 billion videos have already been labeled using existing detection and creator tools so far. And they're testing a new managed topics control, allowing users to adjust how much AI generated content they're actually calling it ai gc, uh, that they see in the for you feed. So in your circles, in the conversations you've had lately Keenya, like how do you think people are feeling about AI generated content overall? Because I feel like we're hearing a lot of different things. People are like, I love it, I love the creativity, and other people are like, I want authenticity. I wanna see people's acne and I want to hear their voice squeak or, you know, whatever it might be. Yeah, I think it's, uh, I think it's up and up. You know, I think that there's some of us that we just love what AI is doing and what it can do, and we're fascinated by these videos. Um, but I think that some people are in fear of it. You know, AI is becoming someone else and fabricating things, but also taking jobs. I think some influencers are concerned because if they're making X amount of dollars as an influencer per video, and now this company is able to do 10 times the amount of videos for less money, the influencers are like, oh my God. And I would be scared too if most of my money was coming from, from brands. So I think that rightfully so, people are excited and not excited about it. Um, I think those that make the most money creating content for brands are in a lot of jeopardy. Uh, and I think that they're scared more than the other people. Hmm. Okay. So with 1. 3 billion videos already labeled

as, you know, AI generated content. So that doesn't mean, obviously you used AI for your script, it means that something in there was, was generated. Does, do you think labeling it normalizes AI content or does this just increase skepticism toward like, everything in the feed and, and Kenia after you answer, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too, Mike, as you are obviously in the AI world so much. Yeah, so I think that having it labeled AI generated, I think one, it protects TikTok from like, from, no, like from putting something out there that is AI and not saying that it is, uh, two, I think that it protects the, the creator for like, if they're putting out AI content that they're like, I'm saying that this is what this is, so that way TikTok doesn't take it down. Um, but I also think that it helps the, the consumer that are actually consuming the content to know that, let me not believe what I'm seeing here. So like, I am very gullible, okay, so I've seen running of videos of bears and horses and deer jumping on trampolines and I'm like, oh my God, look, I Love those. Yay. And I'm like, oh, let's AI generated. And I'm like, 'cause I'm gonna be very gullible. So I think that it helps with that, and I think it also helps 'cause you've got very impressionable people, not just kids, but impressionable people, and that they see something, they will typically believe what it is that they're seeing and think the whole world is ending, but with the detection of that, this is ai, I think it, it helps with the legitimacy of things in a sense, but also I think it protects a lot of people too. Yeah, Mike? Yeah. Um, it is a really interesting quandary because on the one hand I believe that almost all creators, if they're not already using AI to assist them, they will be very soon. Yes. Because it's becoming easier, incrementally easier to edit, to do, to add b roll to, um, do all sorts of fascinating things. So I guess the real question is what kind of content are we talking about, right? Like if there's a video of Keenya and it's a digital version of Keenya, is that gonna be labeled as ai? Um, or is it more the sensational stuff that's designed to get shares and all that kind of stuff? So I would imagine it is kind of one of those like slippery slopes. And I know a lot of the models like SOA and, um, uh, Google's, uh, VO three, um, do watermark with a synthetic idea that kind of signals that it's AI generated, but I can't speak for the stuff coming overseas mm-hmm. From Asia, for example, like the ance one we were talking about. So, um, what we don't know is really what is real and what is not real. So on the one hand I absolutely like the idea of like, you know, like, like some sort of meter that says generated by ai, highly likely, you know, versus, uh, AI enhanced. I mean, that would be really interesting. Like, 'cause I, I kind of like, everyone's gonna be using AI to enhance their videos. Agreed. Yeah. Well, and those watermarks too. I mean, I, for, for the majority of the population, they're not even gonna notice that or even know to look for it. Right? They're not in our world where we're like, oh, we see that and why is that thing on my video? Or, you know, whatever it might Be. Well, and the watermarks aren't even sometimes visible. They're like underneath in the code. Correct. Yeah, yeah. Well this will be very, very interesting. Um, you know, on YouTube right now, you are asked if something was AI generated in a misleading way, but it's still not a required question. But I do think we're gonna get to the point where it's just gonna be required. You're expected to, to answer every time, and it's gonna be one of those things there. If the automated detection flags you later, you might get in trouble for that and get shut down or banned for a bit. I think so too. So you might as well just click on the label. Yeah, yeah. Just be upfront about it. All right. Kenia, this has been a really fascinating conversation. Thank you for joining us today. If people wanna explore working with you, where do you want to send them? If they want to connect with you on the socials, what's the best place to find you? Yeah, First things first, meet me in Anaheim at Social Media Marketing World. That's first. Um, but also I'm on all social media platforms under Keenya Kelly. And then my website is Keenya Kelly, Keenya. And Jerry, thanks for absolutely fascinating show today. And folks, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over over@socialmediaexaminer. com slash seven. One is zero. It's hard to believe we've had 710 weeks of this show. If you're new to the show, follow us on whatever podcast platform you're listening on. And if you've been a listener for a little while, we would love a review. And do check out the other show that we published called the AI Explored Podcast. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I was joined today by Jerry Potter as my co-host, and I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day. And may your marketing keep evolving.