You may have noticed that I have not been blogging lately and honestly, it's mostly down to TikTok. For all of the love I have for social media, nothing has been so impactful as TikTok and as I've recently gone viral I thought I would share what actually happens when you go viral on TikTok.
I started doing TikTok for fun during the winter lockdown, I shared the walks that I was doing and my aim was to get to 1000 followers. Within a month I accidentally had a semi-viral post of my pets being ridiculous and I started to get a few more followers, I then had a gradual build until I posted about some money-saving travel hacks and that got me to around 7000 followers, it was lovely and slow and steady and then suddenly I found my feet.
If you want to be successful on social media you need to add value or entertain, teaching people to do things in one minute or less seemed to me like a challenge and as I make things for Christmas every year I thought I would share the process. I made a few videos that had some good views and I could see myself reaching 10,000 followers and being able to join the creator fund. Then I posted a 1-minute Tiktok documenting myself making Rhubarb gin and everything changed.
Since I posted that TikTok on the 22nd of September my follower count has risen from just over 8k to just over 40k and that one TikTok has reached over 465000 people, let's just think about how many people that would be in real life?!! It's not only brought me followers but it's made me the loveliest community, a community of people who love making things, who love gin and who adore Christmas. It is the best community and if you fancy joining me I'm Mandyyourtiktokmum I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up the content ideas but honestly, the internet is so full of things you can make that I can't see me running out of ideas anytime soon.
Has it changed my life or lead to my business going viral and selling out? No, honestly, it hasn't but I use TikTok not to push my businesses but because I've always wanted to be a creator, I love making things and I love creating content. I do have some added extras on my profile like my shop is connected in my profile through Shopify and yes, I definitely get sales that way but I would never encourage anyone to go viral on TikTok with the expectation that it's going to skyrocket their business. It might do in certain circumstances and it really depends on what your TT that goes viral is all about.
In the future I'd love to teach people how to make things, it's where I began all those years ago working in the craft industry. Abi moves out at the end of this week and I'm turning that room into my craft room. I plan to make things not just for me but also for Philomena's Boutique I've bought a Cricut, and I have managed to get my hands on a second-hand dye-sublimation printer and my next work purchase is going to be a mug press and T-Shirt/Bag press. I can't wait to be more creative, especially as the winter is coming and my Jan-March calendar is never all that busy.
Am I worried that in January people will stop watching my content? Not really because I'm building up a community that is all about making (and gin) and we can make things together all year round. Handmade things aren't just for Christmas. Plus I know how to add value in so many areas, I have been practising for this moment for years on other forms of social media, it's just how I happened to have found my people on TikTok.
Between various forms of social media and my blog I can reach way over 100k people a month, in fact, the last month alone on TikTok I've reached around 1 million people in total and we're only just at the start of video content, this is only going to keep growing over the years and I am there for it, I love it all!!
Do I get trolled? Yes, occasionally, it's the curse of social media but I just block and delete, I'm pretty laid back when it comes to such things and I have the most supportive group of cheerleading friends who are all there behind me to keep me grounded and remind me that I am enough.
So if you're missing my daily updates you can find me on TikTok and I promise to still try and find the time to write, it didn't help that I shot 5 weddings in the space of 2 weeks and I've only just come out of the editing hole I was in for a month!! Life moves pretty fast, I heard that somewhere...
