The future and trends on Instagram in 2021

Welcome to the second edition of the B2B influencer marketing chat series. Today our guest is Nyomi Rose.

Who is Nyomi Rose?

Nyomi Rose is a final year Events Management student who has flourished during this COVID-19 era through leveraging her social media skills and to spread positivity, passion and love for the events industry. In six months Nyomi has transformed her skillset and developed a status as a young professional woman within the world of events, becoming a prominent figure in the pursuit of diversity, sustainability, social media optimisation and youth empowerment through her Instagram and LinkedIn pages.

Nyomi Rose empowers and provides impactful insight to individuals and SMEs to optimise their social media and marketing strategy. Nyomi is a Tech, AI and Data enthusiast and aims to bridge the digital gap through sharing her knowledge and insights.

We talked with with Nyomi about :

• TikTok from personal account to professional influencer
• Numbers, influencers, demographics and terminology used on TikTok
• The voice of the young generation (Generation Z, also called GenZ)
• Misunderstanding of TikTok
• Is the MICE industry ready for tiktokers collaborations and B2B influencer marketing campaigns?
• TikTok B2B influencer campaigns
• How to use TikTok in the era of Covid-19?

n case you missed our live session with Nyomi Rose, tune in on your favourite podcast channel:

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

Do you prefer reading over listening? You can read most of our conversation with Gen Z in the MICE industry – Nyomi Rose below. Enjoy listening and reading. Read the full blog post below.

Global pandemic as an opportunity for the MICE industry

Nyomi: Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in today, I’m really excited to talk about TikTok, it is something that I absolutely love. When lockdown first happened, and all the way back in March, I can’t exactly remember the month, it seems to be a bit of a blur. And I started using social media to grow my personal brand, and to really reach out and get into the events industry, because so many opportunities were closing initially. And I thought, why not try and get my own opportunities and use social media to help me do that. And so I really focused heavily on becoming aware of the sort of virtual hybrid elements and also how to ditch the market myself.

And within about two months of really focusing on social media, building my personal brand, I was then able to have opportunity to speak at events like this (webinars, podcasts, online events, Instagram Live). And also, and really get opportunities I really want. Being able to work with some incredible clients, and specifically on TikTok campaigns, and also on social media campaigns as well as both digital and events.

So it’s been an incredible journey to say the least, and TikTok has definitely influenced my journey as well. And just in terms of understanding a completely new platform, with an incredible amount of young people that just something I am most definitely passionate about, which is empowering people to get into the events industry, and talk and have such a large majority of young people and. But it’s growing with other people like Mariska Kesteloo and Jaroslaw Marciuk. Tiktok is an aging platform, which is great to see.

How to start on TikTok

Mariska: Okay, well, thank you Nyomi so much for joining our B2B Influencer Marketing Chat Series. The lockdown had a huge impact on the way you were using TikTok and now even get collaborations out of it. Can you remember when you put your first post out on TikTok, when was that?

Nyomi: Yeah, so my first post on TikTok was literally when lockdown just happened. And it was still when the platform was quite young. But it still had millions of people on that, but not as much as it does now.  I was exploring my journey of who actually am, and participating in a show organized by Irina Graf. And there have been pioneers talk conference. There was a conference in which pioneers spoke about one of their challenges. Originally I just used TikTok as a personal account, where I just honestly I did some really shabby dances, and just have a mock about with my friends. And I didn’t really see the true value of how important the platform, to show your personal brand, but also to really showcase your knowledge, your expression, and different insights as well.

And then I think I did a couple of cooking ones. And this was first back when I went onto TikTok, but then obviously it’s completely evolved and changed during the last couple of months. So that’s how I really started my TikTok journey.

But it was mostly when Instagram added Reels as their new feature. And it kicked me and I started thinking, gosh. People are trying to be like TikTok and but I feel like a lot of other platforms couldn’t properly imitate how TikTok was. And I don’t really feel like Instagram Reels really has its full potential yet whereas TikTok has been able to completely overwhelm the younger generation. So it’s continually growing. And yeah, that’s how I really started when I saw the true potential of TikTok.

Should eventprofs consider to use TikTok?

Mariska: We are talking about the true potential. This was part of the collaboration Word of MICE TikTok Challenge for eventprofs. And to be honest, I was also not a huge fan of this new platform, but I never explored all the opportunities of TikTok. And I started using TikTok thanks to you Nyomi, because of your posts. You shared with us how to create first posts on TikTok. So me as a middle or older person, I also created my first TikTok.

Now I understand why TikTok is so addictive, fun, and why it’s so growing and so popular. I must say it showed me also the misunderstanding that parents might have when their children are all day on TikTok. So there’s a lot of misunderstandings about TikTok. I know you also educate a lot of other people about TikTok. What’s your opinion about this, because it’s a very educative platform as well.

Nyomi: I’m using testimony we did in our challenge as the lead up to this session. And the actual dare to challenge was for people to share their misconceptions about TikTok. And that’s originally what I thought the whole platform was, you know, just dancing all the time. And then people like Sammy, she also shared that it was you know, more than just make-up, lips, and those sort of things. Irina Graf also shared her thoughts as well, so that people were showing all of their different misconceptions.It shows how many people haven’t really actually understood taking the time to look through the platform and see what the potential actually is a platform, and Michael was saying it, people think TikTok is for dancing.

TikTok is not only for dancers and singers

Nyomi: Sometimes, well, it’s a great platform to dance. And people forget that, as event professionals, we get a lot of entertainment to come to our events, we bring in dancers, musicians, artists, we bring in everything to really create that whole event experience. So when I hear a lot people saying: “Oh, TikTok is just for dancing” or “TikTok app is just for singing” you can bring all those different elements together for an event.

So I always think, try TikTok before you’re going to give those misconceptions. When you go onto the platform you’ll see all the different types of content created by young, creative people that’s on there. And even when you go into the Discover page on TikTok, and you have the opportunity to look through all of these different brands who are all wanting to reach out and to get young people to understand that they are a future forward-thinking company. And you can really see that how even these brands also are trying to fight those misconceptions as well on that platform.

So I always say to people, try the platform, have a look through, engage as well with TikTokers. It’s really easy, just scroll through, here they are. See whole TikTok platform, the way it’s all designed. The more you interact, the more you’re engaged, the more you like, and TikTok algorithm will send content that you are interested in, which is not what a lot of other social media platforms have been able.

It’s Day 2 for the #wordofmicetiktokers… a TikTok Challenge to share your misunderstandings of TikTok! Join in with @MariskaKesteloo, @JaroslawMarciuk and I, this is your time #eventprofs to show your creativity & inspire the #NextGen… watch the VIDEO & get involved? pic.twitter.com/CduR0TnoTz

— Nyomi Rose? (@whatnyomidoes) December 8, 2020

Use TikTok to educate

Mariska: I didn’t I even didn’t know that. But it also has apparently also an educating part, which Irina put on during the TikTok Challenge. She even said there’s education part, which I was also not aware of, to be honest.

Nyomi: Even when I go for job interviews, or even when I’m trying to bring on a new client, I actually search on TikTok how to bring in clients, how to do an interview. And all content from all these other professionals is also on there as well. We can actually go on there and learn a kind of like LinkedIn learning, but actual in-house learning that you can do on TikTok is phenomenal. You know, it’s absolutely crazy, the things you can learn.

TikTok`s dictionary and facts for beginners

Jaro: Could you share some tips with us and people who would like to start using TikTok? Please tell us about facts, numbers from the platform, and some special terminology used on TikTok.

Nyomi: I think facts and statistics are really important for people to understand TikTok, especially if you are wanting to go on and build your brand, whether that’s your personal brand, or your company’s brand, 14% of the TikTokers is between the ages of 16 and 24. And I feel like that’s obviously really important stat. Because obviously, it’s a really great demographic, you understand the age groups, and that percentage of people who are on that. But it’s also important when people create TikToks, especially when I see people saying, who are trying to share their brand where it’s, you know, email me, give me a call and let’s book a session. 16 to 24 year olds are probably not going to send you an email, they’re probably not going to give you a call. You know, that’s just not the way Generation Z works. We like everything to be automated, we like chat boxes. That’s how we work as younger people.

So that’s a really interesting if you are thinking of wanting to go on that and how are you going to really make sure that you create that content, specifically for that demographic. But even things like people, go onto the actual minimum amount of time that people on TikTok is 52 minutes a day. And I can definitely come down to two minutes. And I know for sure that I spent more time on TikTok.

What actually that means is when people are going live, or when and they’re showing ads, that there’s even possibilities for you to even actually make money off TikTok. Actually TikTok is reaching out to a young, more niche and tik tokers as well to help them grow their platform. So their user time spending is just rapidly increasing because more brands and more people creating content that they want to find more niche so they can, you know, go into different markets as well,

Demographics

I also think is a really interesting statistic. And it’s from 150 markets, 75 languages, 50% of the TikTok audience is global, and they’re all under 35 years of age. And I find that so incredible, because what a lot of other platforms haven’t been able to do is make their content diverse or inclusive by a variety of languages.

You can scroll on TikTok, and you don’t necessarily have to understand what they’re saying. But you can relate because of the music, or the facial expressions are even the filters that have been used, whereas a lot of other platforms such as Facebook, that they really can’t get into that audience. And things like even like Instagram, if you really wanted to build yourself on Instagram, you’ve really got to master the art of hashtags and consistency. Whereas on TikTok that’s just something that isn’t necessarily needed. So I find those sort of statistics really important, especially for when you’re trying to leverage yourself on the platform as well.

Engagement

Another sort of interesting point is that there’s 29% engagement rate on TikTok, which I find is really interesting when you look at things like Twitter, where their engagement rate is way below 10%, even Instagram engagement I think it’s something like 14%. So all these other social media platforms, they haven’t been able to specifically target that content to that particular use. Whereas the TikTok algorithm works I mentioned before.  The more you go on the platform, the more you use it, the more you like that content it will target that content towards you, which is why that engagement rate is so high. That’s why people, you always hear these huge stories of people being able to blow up on TikTok, and they’ve became well known people or even millionaires. That’s the way that they’ve interacted on their platform as well.

How to use TikTok in a professional way

Nyomi: What I would definitely say is you need to make sure that your account is a professional account so that you can really see like was saying before the optimal times of posting understand who’s watching what,  when you can find out if your content is interesting, if it’s got low engagement, there’s a reason for that. And if it’s got high engagement, there’s a reason for that as well. And but then even trying to film your tik toks as well.

We’ve got to make sure that all our tiktoks are vertical. The whole reason that the platform is so gorgeous, it takes up the full space of your phone. There’s not a lot of chance for you to look at, you can’t even see that the time and everything you know, in the top bar, your actual phone, it completely covers everything. So definitely, I’m adopting the vertical PDF formats as well. And it’s important that if you are going to be using this as a professional count, that I’m actually it was interesting before this, I am diverging from the question. But we were saying before everybody joined that, and Jaro doesn’t really want to necessarily use tik tok to show his face, he wants to kind of show some of your architecture.

Authencity and influence

That’s just not the way that Tik Tok works, the way that you can really create good content on Tik tok, and really showcase that content, is by making it look as least advertising as possible. It’s got to be so authentic, it doesn’t need to be professional, you know, it doesn’t need to be this high quality production team standard video. It really, honestly, it really doesn’t, the more that your videos look like tiktoks than advertisements, the more that you’re going to be able to grow on that. And the more that people are going to be able to see the huge impact that the MICE industry has on the entire economy, you know, and I feel like that’s how important it is for the MICE industry to get on there.

But in terms of predictions, I feel like people are talking about the misconceptions, people just need to realize that maybe we can’t do everything. So let’s open the doors to people who can do this. And who can put our brand out there. I feel like that is really important. I can say you just give it a go and not get so caught up with the misconceptions. Because this is a growing platform that young people are using.

And even if TikTok dies next year, they’re be something else, that will be coming up. But the key thing is that you’ve missed that key demographic way of being able to create content for them. And for them to get to know who your brand is, get to understand your event, how you put it all together, you as an event professional, and that’s what people will miss. We put in like event description at the younger people who will become a business partners that require employees, require customers, they’ll become competitors. It’s important that we recognise that and we adapt to it.

I don`t want to show my face on TikTok

Nyomi:  Lots of people still don’t really want to show their face on TikTok, which is completely fine. And that’s where you can be a lot more creative, where you can even use photos that you’ve taken from an event. And if you go on the event you can create a post, and you go into templates, there’s already 50 plus templates that are already up there, we can use images to share and to create sort of photo reels, and kind of show transformational journeys as well.

Define your strategy

Nyomi: I would really like to say that, if you’re wanting to become Tiktoker and use TikTok, you’ve really got to be authentic with yourself, you’ve really got to understand why you’re going to share on TikTok. Your business or personal profile is to inspire others, to be entertaining. So you’ve got to understand your ‘why’ and have a clear strategy. Make sure that your content is all coming off different aspects of that. Because what is really sometimes difficult is that people just kind of try and do everything. And sometimes that can even be more confusing, as well for the audience, whe you are creating different types of content.

The whole importance of TikTok is your niche. So when you’re creating content, it’s specifically for event education, you know, you’re trying to get people to get into the industry, or you’re trying to get people to be more aware of your business, you got to make sure that content is all around that because all those hashtags that you’ll be using all the people that have been watching, they’ll be pushing more of your content to your directed audience. So it’s important that you choose your niche.

Mariska: Good point, it also has to do with a good strategy actually. So finding your niche, finding your why and then focus like you’re using any other social media platforms is creating a good strategy,  and posting in a consistent and professional way and analyse your data.

Jaro: What I like about Tik Tok is the thing that it is in it`s starting point. I remember when I started my Instagram 10 years ago. At the beginning, all people were asking me what is this thing, Instagram? Now Instagram has become a major social media platform. So I think you should at least try and check TikTok. Who knows what is going to happen in five years time.

@whatnyomidoesHow I grew myself as a ##youngproffesional ##GenZ ##millennials ##trending ##mystory ##NextGen ##wordofmicetiktokers♬ Mood (feat. iann dior) – 24KGoldn

Is TikTok a good platform for B2B Marketing?

Jaro: TikTok has been already by future employers to look for employees to check their activities ans passions online. HR agencies verify future employees on social media. TikTok and other emerging Gen Z platforms could be interesting tools not only for theses companies to commincate, and not only for B2C market, but also for B2B.

Nyom: TikTok is already a B2B platform, but people may be potentially haven’t had a chance to have a look at that opportunity. TikTok`s feature called create Marketplace where you can find lots of different creators who are selling their businesses, who are on there. Obviously TikTok brings great leads, so it is a B2B. But when we’re trying to understand that B2B environment is really part of that, and that content that we’re creating, on that b2b, on tik tok, that it’s inspiring, it’s not traditional, it’s not traditional things that usually talk about, you know, if you’re going to go on there, and you know, say ‘this is what we sell, you know, we do this, we do that, etc’, people probably not going to be likely to engage. So there’s, that’s why I’m saying there’s different ways that you can create that content by, you know, saying, Oh, we got a podcast where we talked about this, you know, like, you know, sign up now, check the link in the bio and stuff. There’s different ways that you can interact and build that b2b audience.

Mariska: I think we can talk for hours about TikTok, Generation Z, eventprofs and data. I think we need to invite you for another session. Well, I would say first of all, thank you so much for the participants for joining. And if you have any questions for Nyomi Rose, let us know.

Huge thank you to Nyomi (WhatNyomiDoes), thank you for sharing your passion because you’re definitely passionate about TikTok and I will continue on my personal and professional brand to make some great videos on TikTok. You can also follow Nyomi on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok of course.