Beyond Viral Dances: TikTok Strategies for Business Success with Seva Mozhaev

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] And a Global greetings to everybody. Welcome to the Good for Business Show. I am your host, Michelle J Raymond, and I am joined by TikTok super creator, Sev. Welcome to the show.

Seva Mozhaev: Thank you for having me, Michelle. It's a pleasure to be here.

Michelle J Raymond: I am very excited to have you here. As I shared with you yesterday, it's for the street cred points with my niece and nephew, who I tried to say, if I hang out with the cool TikTok creators, does that make me cool?

And they said not really, cause they don't get LinkedIn, but you planted a seed with me yesterday and you said Michelle, like they're gonna grow up. And I was like boom. Everything you are doing now is gonna pay off in five years time when these guys are hitting the workforce. And so I just wanted to share that with you.

People that haven't come across you, may not know too much about TikTok may be bit curious, the typical isn't it, all those silly dancers? Who are you, Sev, who do you help? And what do you do?

Seva Mozhaev: Originally I migrated from the Soviet Union, former Soviet Union in the Nineties.

[00:01:00] And I started learning English and found my way into the football world playing in the West Australian Football League. And then I decided to go to Uni and went into teaching, cause my mum's a teacher, my grandma's a teacher. Got the degree and during that time, as I was getting a degree, I had an injury in footy.

I did my ACL and I had one year off. And in that time I picked up photography because I always loved it and I thought, okay, let's go in a little bit more of a proper camera DSLR. So I did that for the start of 2015 and loved it. Absolutely loved it. Take photos every day. It was my thing. It was great.

And then over the next few years I graduated. I quit football and began my teaching career and I got a permanent job rather quickly. I don't know something about me that they liked. And over the next two years, we're in 2019 in that timeline, I discovered TikTok from one of the students in [00:02:00] class was on TikTok.

And I was like, what's so funny? I want to be involved, because I was always about wanting to know what the kids were interested in because I wanted to build rapport. Build my 'In-school personal brand' I call it now, with the kids. So I knew what lingo they were into, what trends they were doing, what apps they were doing, what games they were playing, and TikTok was it.

Lip syncing and dancing was the craze. And I was like, nah, that's not for me, but I'll download it and do my own thing on there, give it a crack. And then the kids found my TikTok page, like randomly. Sir, we love your TikTok page. And I'm like, what? I've got like 20 followers, how did you even find my account? That's weird.

And because I never went private on social media apart from maybe my Facebook. And the reason was I had a whole photography page 'Sev's pics' on Instagram and I wasn't gonna go private on that because I wanted to keep sharing my photos. The kids found that and they found that more interesting.

And at the start of every class, I'd share the [00:03:00] photos I would take that week and they were invested. They were like, yep, we love to come to your class. We don't really like the content that you put out to us in the lesson because the Curriculum's outdated. Fair enough. But we love to hear your stories of photography.

And I was like, aha. Okay, what else am I gonna do here? So then what happened was I dived into wedding photography cause I really liked it, give it a crack. And started getting a few bookings, just organically through Facebook pages and word of mouth. And then there was a few quoting kind of services online that I found news.

And then I was like, surely not. I, you know, plugged myself on TikTok, because in 2019 I had a video that went a little bit viral, like 30, 40,000 views. And the followers started going up. If you go to my Instagram page and go to the, TikTok journey highlights, you can actually see from start to finish the entire journey, cause I documented all of it. I never knew that I was gonna get to where I am today, [00:04:00] but I documented everything and I'm so glad I did, cause it's literally a perfect timeline.

Fast forward to 2020 and I said to my Principal, I'm gonna have a year off and this is before COVID hit. And I started getting bookings for weddings. And again, I didn't really plug my TikTok yet that I told everybody I was a wedding photographer, but then I was like, you know what, I'll give it a go. I'll put one out.

Two bookings in two days. And all I did was give tips about being a wedding photographer and the comments were, I didn't know, you were a wedding photographer.

I had a 13 year old kid comment saying Sev in 15 years, when I get married, can you please be my photographer? Planting the seed. And I was like, I'm onto something here. Let's double down on this. Anyway, I stayed in the school system for 2020 because it's a recession proof, pandemic proof Government job.

So it was a bit of a play there, but by mid 2020, I could have quit but I didn't cause I committed to the kids. I love the kids. And before the end of 2020, I [00:05:00] was booked out for weddings for the entire 2021. And by, from memory, February, March 2021, I was booked out for 2022. And then by mid-year 2021, I was booked out two years.

I had a two year sales pipeline and over 70% of that was from TikTok. Organic leads from TikTok for my personal service based business, which is wedding photography. So within probably two years of stepping into the TikTok world, thinking like everybody else going, this is a lip sync dance app for kids to going I'm booking full grown adults that can only get married legally, if they're over 18. And wedding photography's not cheap. And I'm now booked out for two years. I can quit my job. I haven't looked back. I talked about that on LinkedIn and I wasn't even on LinkedIn properly, at the start of last year. I had an account, back in the day, everyone has one of those accounts that, oh, we'll make one.

I made it [00:06:00] and then I started going on it a little bit more and companies and brands and businesses started hitting me up, saying I'm interested in what you're doing. I want to hear more about your two year sales pipeline. Can you help me and my business or my company or my brand?

And I'm like what? That's a thing? And in the mix of all of that Clubhouse when it was rising up, that was very helpful for me too. I don't use it anymore because last time I went back there, it was just a bunch of snake oil salesmen. But when it was really pumping, I got so confident in what I had because I would jump up on stage and just nonstop talk. I wouldn't take a breath.

Much like I am now and I would get people going, Sev, you have something here. Why don't you like do this as a course? Or why don't you do a workshop or something? And I'm like I have a Teaching Degree. I know how to write stuff. I know how to structure things. I know how to make systems, and I know how to keep people accountable, cause I did it with children and I have creative direction because I'm a wedding photographer. My whole job is to make you look [00:07:00] good on your wedding day.

So I was like, all right, stars have aligned. Let's do it. And here I am talking with you and life's great. I'm enjoying it. I get to work from home. My dogs are here. I got my first studio two months ago in the city. It's crazy. And I still feel like it's day one and I'm winging it.

Michelle J Raymond: Oh my God. And if people are listening into this and not being inspired I don't know what else I can do for you because it just shows that anything's possible for anyone.

And I think, it's those that pursue that beyond the part where you don't know what you're doing, where it feels like what is going on here? Am I a phony? Are people going to think that I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't have a piece of paper to back it up. I really wanted to share that story with the audience today because I think it's just really powerful.

Now I wanna ask you one quick question, which is you've come from TikTok creator for several years now. And you jump onto the platform called LinkedIn. What [00:08:00] are your observations about the differences between the two? What do you find weird? What do you think's cool.

Seva Mozhaev: Good question. There was one bit of the story I missed out on, I ended up going to 1.2 million followers just in case everybody hasn't seen what that is. And I started getting my bookings for wedding photography around the 10, 20,000 follower, mark. And now it's just an open tap that I'm trying to close, but it's stuck open, but the difference with TikTok and LinkedIn is the language that you speak.

When I went from Facebook pages and quoting services online for weddings, the reason why I left those and went fully organic, content at scale was because of the budget. I found that I got a lot of knock backs because when you have a two year sales pipeline, you're too cheap. Realistically.

So you need to double or even triple your rates even as a wedding photographer. And when I did it, I didn't believe it because I was like, no way. My business coach said, you should do it. And I'm like no, I don't think that's possible. [00:09:00] Four weeks later, I had four bookings, which would've been normally 10 to 12 bookings.

And I was like oh my God. But how that translates into LinkedIn is again, the language. So I have clients that approach me from TikTok. They find me on TikTok. They stalk me on Instagram. They validate me on my website and, I'm legit. And I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to provide value.

So then you can make a decision and ask me, hey, do you do one on one mentorships? And I'll be like, yep, here it is. And that now has also translated into LinkedIn because LinkedIn has more decision makers, CEOs, founders, directors, people that are on there, like who have a lot of experience and they wanna know what's next.

They want to jump onto the next thing to then leverage that and expand more and scale more. You don't see that on other platforms. So that's why I see LinkedIn as more valuable in that way, but that comes now to a language that I speak. I can't be the Sev on TikTok. I am on LinkedIn, [00:10:00] but also I have one of my biggest clients ever.

The director of the marketing agency that found me, who has them as a client, found me on TikTok, just scrolling through TikTok. I remember getting a call one day from his assistant going hey Sev, we love your stuff. The director, he found you on TikTok and we love to have a chat and I'm like, damn.

So when someone says LinkedIn is only B2B BS. You can go onto TikTok. And like you said, at the start, your niece, your nephews, they know. They've seen me before, they understand they become the business cards. It sounds evil, if a kid goes, mum, I want to go here because I saw it on TikTok. The mum doesn't have to do any of the work. Oh my God. It's a great idea.

Michelle J Raymond: Problem solved. I love it. I saw some stats that TikTok put out for their business stats. And it said that over 70% of the people that they interviewed actually said that TikTok had influenced them to research a brand or reach out and purchase a product [00:11:00] from a brand which is just crazy stats.

So tell me something. If I'm a brand and, or a business owner, and I want to have a go at TikTok, how do I approach it differently to say someone that's doing it for their personal account? Is there a difference or is it you are a TikTok version of yourself and then an off-platform version of yourself?

How does that work?

Seva Mozhaev: I think it's pretty universal. For the most part the principles are the same. Everybody needs a mascot. Every business, every entity needs something at the forefront of it. And I feel that the next few generations thrive off of that. I see kids on iPads all the time and they just watch one specific character, whether it's Bluey or Dora or the Wiggles or whoever.

They're making millions of dollars, those franchises. And if you can create a lovable, trustworthy character from your business, company or whatever, giving value that is the play that is the ultimate play.

And now I think what's happening is the [00:12:00] successful companies who have been around for a while, their behind the scenes 'Heads Of', they could leverage this even more. They can become famous online and people will start going, what does this person actually do? And then they go stalking. They go, oh, he owns this. Oh, cool. I like the person I'm going to invest in that company. I'm going to go to that company.

It can scale all the way to the top. I wouldn't be surprised if someone like Gina Rinehart or Twiggy Forrest started to speak a little bit more because they're doing their mining stuff.

Michelle J Raymond: Their billionaire thing.

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah. Their billionaire thing. They could take it so much further. And people online or companies like, the oil and gas sector, they're trying to say that they're gonna do stuff for the community, which is great. Not the biggest of fans of ruining the earth but I'm not gonna go hippie on you about this. It's like each their own. But if they wanna scale it more, then if they really wanna make an impact and really drive community, they gotta put their faces in the front of it. Not [00:13:00] just rely on Rio Tinto this, and BHP that, and Woodside this.

It's like, who cares? Like the kids don't care. The kids don't even wanna work there because they wanna do some fun stuff. But if they put themselves in the front line, The kids will go, oh, I've seen them on TikTok. Oh, that's the evolution over the next two to 10 years beyond.

Michelle J Raymond: And there could be some people that are listening to this going Sev, yeah that's great for TikTok, but it doesn't happen on LinkedIn. Now I'm here to actually share that's not the case because I went to a LinkedIn webinar yesterday on content marketing that was researched by some of the biggest institutes in the world. So I'm guessing that LinkedIn have pumped a ton of money into this research. And basically what they shared was exactly the same thing.

Having a mascot is something that is really critical to creatives on LinkedIn ads and organic content for that matter. So a good example of it is Salesforce, they have their little cartoon character, [00:14:00] which is a huge part of their brand. And they were actually recommending to make sure that more companies on LinkedIn are using these characters as well.

So if you think that it's just a dismissive, oh, that's TikTok. It's not LinkedIn. I think you missing such a huge play. So I absolutely, agree with what you're saying there.

Seva Mozhaev: I think with LinkedIn now, for what I've seen personally, just organic reach, I get a message or two every day from someone new going, Hey Sev, we'd love to catch up. Hey Sev, we'd like to pick your brain. Hey, we'd love to have a coffee.

As much as that's cool. I'm like, okay how do I get this into a converted sale or whatever I'm doing. But to be honest, I'm not chasing that. It just comes naturally for me. But for someone that is, the bottom line is yes, you have to be a mascot, but you have to come with intent.

You can't just jump on a platform and go, oh, okay. LinkedIn's next? All right. Cool. Cool, cool. No, you still have to have that authentic brand about you. And if you do that and show compassion and show that you actually care, [00:15:00] the content will just like come and come. But with the research I'm seeing for LinkedIn, I think that over the next few years, when more people flood to it, I wouldn't be surprised if they did get a 'For You' feed but the language would be business oriented.

Michelle J Raymond: You know what it's called? It's called the 'Discover' page. So there's a new page coming. They're testing it right now being rolled out. So you absolutely smack on the money.

Seva Mozhaev: I didn't even know that.

Michelle J Raymond: So there you go. It's about discovering things that aren't in your first degree connections.

So really exactly what you said. How do brands, people get discovered outside of that first degree, small world that we've got. And I think that LinkedIn always takes cues off other platforms. What's working. What's not. Some things work and resonate, some things don't. Goodbye, LinkedIn stories. I miss you.

There's always gonna be evolution on the platform. And I think as creators, if you think that the algorithm is penalising you, actually, no, it's not. It's your community that's saying your content doesn't resonate [00:16:00] anymore because if it resonates, they'll press buttons. They'll comment. They'll get involved. A lot of it falls back on us.

Seva Mozhaev: And that is huge with the content creation. When people were doing well with their vanity metrics and then it drops, they think they get shadow banned. There's no shadow banning. There is times like on Instagram, you can clearly tell you've been shadow banned, cause when people try to research your name you're not turning up. The bottom line is the market gets over you, unless you're a complete outlier and you pass that barrier of popularity where it's just exponential. 0.1% get there, but we all think we can and it is possible, but the bottom line is you just need to keep pushing out value and you need to enjoy it.

You need to enjoy it. If you do it specifically to go, oh my God, this is the be all end all. If this video doesn't hit, my business is going under. People are gonna see your desperation in your voice, in your eyes, in your face going nah, no good. But that's, a whole another conversation about business there and showcasing your knowledge and showcasing [00:17:00] your value.

If people don't see it, you're dead in the water from the beginning. That's the other thing, don't keep doing the same thing. Always experiment. It's an 80, 20 strategy, 80% what works 20% experimental. I've been doing it for over three years and I have outlasted a lot of other creators from the start of TikTok.

I was in a creator's group on TikTok two years ago and 95% of them aren't even on the platform anymore. And they had more followers than me. They were getting more views, but towards the end, they were all saying the same thing. Wha why am I not getting any views? Oh my God, TikTok sucks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Same with every other platform, the platform doesn't care.

Michelle J Raymond: Yeah, I think it comes back to what you said before. Do things that you enjoy as well, because if you don't enjoy it, you burn out it's that simple. When you're creating content, create things that you enjoy that play to your strengths, try some new things, and don't be afraid for it to flop, too many people want the perfect, strategy that will make sure that everything performs every single time.

And you never [00:18:00] grow from just doing same old. So I wanna know something. So a brand comes to you today and they say, you know Sev, we want a TikTok strategy. What's the timeframe on this? If a client comes to me on LinkedIn, we're talking, I would say minimum six months, probably more like 12 months before we start to see something. Is TikTok similar or is it faster at the moment because of, just the popularity. What's your thoughts on that?

Firstly, I'll start off with observations of what people are doing and then I'll tell you what I am doing for what I have done and what I'm doing for my clients.

Seva Mozhaev: So at the moment, I'm seeing people jump on and jump straight into ads without building a brand online, wrong.

Michelle J Raymond: Doesn't work.

Seva Mozhaev: Reason why that is, is I want to check your validity and there's no way to do it because I'm going straight to the landing page or the click funnel. I don't want to do that. I wanna see more of your content and get nurtured by it, not see the same ad every time. And what I'm seeing is these agencies they're [00:19:00] going, we'll do a campaign. Campaign to me is a curse word, because campaign means a one off. I want an ongoing campaign, like brand building, that's the play and that's the long term play.

And historically over the last three years of the people I've been working with the ones that have been most successful early, have the ones that have been putting out two to three pieces of content a day, and all of a sudden people listening now will go oh my God, that's too many. That's too many things, but I have a system that I have been building over the last two years, specifically over the last six months, actually, that I've got perfect. It's gold. Anybody can take it and run it and go actually, it's not that hard to make two to three pieces a day.

Then when they actually do it, hence the accountability they'll be able to see results probably within the first month because it's quantity first and then it becomes quality. And then it becomes quantity of quality because you've listened to your market. You implement the 80 20 strategy, and then you're off and racing.[00:20:00]

I've managed to build two accounts over a hundred thousand followers each. Yes, it's vanity metrics, but there's another point to this later on, within three months. However, agencies, TikTok Gurus, coaches go here's how I built a client's TikTok page in one week. And they say we built it in one week to a hundred thousand followers.

No, you didn't because you started three months of slow growth, and then it went bang, but you are BSing your new target audience thinking it's gonna happen in seven days straight away. And when it doesn't, there's some salt in the water, in the mouth, whatever you call it. And then that cripples them going, oh, I don't trust that anymore.

I don't think TikTok's for me. So agencies are actually stuffing up for clients cause they're doing it wrong. And then I come in and go, Hey, you should do a TikTok account. No we've already tried that. And then I do an audit and I'm like, no, you didn't really try it. You ran a campaign with an agency.

You put out 11 influencers and got 12 million views [00:21:00] over five videos. Why are you telling me it's not working because it's paid Ads, there's no brand building. So to answer your question, end rant, it's between three to six months because you're brand building.

I'm not centric to TikTok anymore. I'm pushing Facebook pages. I'm pushing YouTube shorts. I'm pushing Instagram reels because it's there, it's an and play. And then the language slightly changes for LinkedIn, but it's slowly becoming the same language. I'm seeing that. And that's what you need to do. It's not, Hey, it's TikTok now. It's 'And TikTok now', and this is how you do it.

And the repurposing system I have is insanely good. It takes one day to set up 30 plus pieces of content. And then the only hard part is the complexity of the content that you make or film depending on who you are and what your content pillars are. If you have your content pillars solid, and you're able to structure that again, my [00:22:00] system's got that.

You're able to batch everything within a couple of days. You don't need big agencies. You just need structure and a system. And my clients I prefer internal marketing teams because I go in, I upskill them for three months. I internally train them. I create the system for them. I'm doing it with a client right now and they love me already.

It's great. Yeah. Now I'm like, okay, accountability. You need to make sure you keep it up. One Instagram story a day isn't gonna cut it.

Michelle J Raymond: Yeah. Can I tell you something funny? And I'm gonna sound like a broken record here and sound like I'm part of the Sev fan club, which I am, but I wanna tell you again, the B2B research that LinkedIn was presenting yesterday absolutely said the split should be 60:40. 60% of your time is building brand and 40% is on these paid demand strategies, because the long term brand building exercise pays back exponentially more than those short term gains from a paid strategy.

Seva Mozhaev: [00:23:00] Planting the seed.

Michelle J Raymond: Exactly.

And I am in a similar position where people come to me about LinkedIn Company Pages and they wanna spend money on ads because they've got a budget and I say to them, but you don't know what works on the platform.

You don't know who your target audience is, what content do they like? What style, what format, any of these kind of things, if you can't answer that all you're doing is burning money on the other side. And LinkedIn will thank you. You'll then say LinkedIn doesn't work. Cause we don't blame ourselves. We blame the platforms.

And then you're gonna take off and say, okay, I'm gonna go throw my money at YouTube shorts or Instagram or this or that. We tend to think that these platforms are all so different, but I think the principles at their core are actually really similar, which I didn't expect it to be this similar in this conversation.

But the more you speak the more, I'm like, there is just so much commonality here that is crazy. To finish up and I know we've covered a lot and I appreciate how generously you've shared everything. So what's the biggest mistake that brands are [00:24:00] making. Is it that they're jumping straight to paid or is there something else that's going on here?

Seva Mozhaev: Yeah they're jumping straight to paid. They're not having a mascot. They're trying things that are outdated. They're going straight to trends and they also hire agencies who fluff them with vanity metrics. And to summarise all that in my favourite quote this year. 'Marketing is when you ask someone out on a date and branding is the reason they say, yes.' Branding comes first.

Michelle J Raymond: Absolutely. I'm writing the LinkedIn branding book. It'll be out on November 18 for exactly this reason, because when I set my business up two and a half years ago, I didn't get the impact. As I shared many times, I come from a sales background and the branding was always handled by another team.

And then I set my own business up and all of a sudden it's like, Oh, now I get it. I really understand the importance of it, so you will not get any arguments. Every single show Sev, I ask the people that [00:25:00] join me to share one tip, an actionable tip that someone that's listening in can take away and implement today, if they wanna explore TikTok for a business. What do you think that tip would be from you?

Seva Mozhaev: Go to the American side of TikTok. And just search up whatever your niche is, whatever your industry is, whatever your business is, on TikTok. Filter it by most liked, most popular and have a look at what they're doing.

All the Americans are killing it. The reason why they're killing it is cause there's 300 million of them. They've got more competition. They need to be more creative. They need to hustle and they need to outdo each other. There's more desperation.

Over in Australia, there's not that much. Everybody's going, whatever, how are you? You just find an American account that's doing what you are doing here and just repurpose that because that's what trends are. Music these days is all repurposed sampled stuff from 70's Disco. You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

The brainstorming comes in [00:26:00] from already made content. You just repurpose it. And if you're still struggling, I've got the system. I teach you exactly how to do it.

Michelle J Raymond: I love it. And I think, for me, if I'm gonna give people a tip from this I think it's to just not disregard it and go in with an open mind, because it's the same with Company Pages.

I have people that have a fixed opinion on what they think they are and how they think they work. Platforms have changed and evolved. We know the demographics for instance, on LinkedIn right now are literally split, roughly 50:50 between Baby Boomers at one end, and then we've got all the younger generations Gen Z's, Millennials.

Now, we're really lucky in Australia, cause when people say to me, Michelle, my clients aren't on the platform. I say, do you know that there's 48% of the Australian population on LinkedIn. We have one of the highest per capita usages in the world and that's a real opportunity.

So my point being open minds. See what's possible. Learn from experts like [00:27:00] Sev and go forth and grow your business because that's what the Good for Business Show is all about.

And speaking of branding, next week, I am joined by my LinkedIn bestie, the power of Michelle Squared, Michelle Griffin, and I are gonna be talking all about brand building. So who would've thought great segue into that one.

 I appreciate your time today, Sev. Don't forget to go to Sev's profile on LinkedIn in the top right hand corner underneath the banner is a bell. Make sure you click on that so you see all of his great content that he's putting out on the platform and of course go and find him on TikTok @sevspics. Thank you everybody. And we will see you next week.