This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Let's get into some tips for building a fitness brand on TikTok. Welcome to Side Hustle School with Chris Guillebeau, your host here. Today's question comes from Jessica in Florida. She is a fitness enthusiast. She wants to create short workout videos on TikTok.
This is a big thing. Lots of them are getting lots of views. Some creators have been able to monetize these views and followings in lots of different ways. So Jessica wants to know what's the best way to stand out and grow her following. So if you're interested in making videos on TikTok, if you're interested in taking an idea or a topic like exercise, basically anything you could teach doesn't have to be exercise and TikTok doesn't have to be the platform.
But specifically through the lens of this focus, this category on this platform, what can you do to grow it? How can you make it successful? Let's talk about some effective strategies, detailed question from Jessica and my answer coming up after this quick shout out to our sponsor. Hey, Chris, this is Jessica from Miami, Florida. I am a fitness enthusiast and I've been thinking about creating short niche workout videos on TikTok, but with so many fitness creators out there, I'm wondering how I can stand out and really connect with my audience.
Like what strategies can I use to create engaging content and how can I effectively market my videos on TikTok to grow my following? I would love some tips on both the content creation side and the marketing side. Thanks for your help. All right, Jessica, as you know, TikTok can be an incredible platform for reaching a large audience with short engaging content, but there's also a lot of creators out there. So you need some kind of strategy, you need an approach and you can try to be as good as everybody else or maybe better than everyone else, but that's tough because so many people are trying hard.
So you can also think about how you can be different in some way. It's a lesson I've taken from Sally Hogg said, a good friend of mine, I often think about better versus different and other people have talked about it as well, but Sally has this very concise way of thinking about it. It's easier to be different than better, to put it bluntly. So first of all, define your niche and audience. Probably trying to be a general fitness influencer is just tough, unless you're a Peloton instructor or otherwise have some huge platform.
So let's get really specific. Let's narrow down that focus. What specific aspect of fitness are you passionate about and what specific target market do you want to serve? Again, the more specific, the better. So it's not just busy moms, for example, it could be, I don't know, busy moms who are working in a certain industry or busy moms of a certain age, busy moms from a certain background.
There's just a lot that you could do to actually get even more specific than that. So however you do it, get more specific. Engaging and consistent content, well, TikTok is all about that quick engaging content. You have to hook people really, really quickly, a strong hook in the first few seconds to grab attention. It could be a surprising fact, a question, a quick demonstration of what's to come.
You want to make sure it entices viewers to watch the whole video. So that's an increasingly important part of online video these days, because we're just kind of scrolling and we go really quickly. And all of the algorithms, not just TikTok, YouTube is really big on this as well. If you continue to watch, then that is assigned to YouTube or TikTok or whoever, that you're actually interested in this kind of content. So if you want to train your audience to respond, you have to get them to watch more than just a few seconds of the video.
Let's see what else we could talk about, well, hashtags, engaging with your audience, responding to comments, using TikTok's features. They're always coming out with new stuff, duets, stitches, effects, trends, that can help your content reach a broader audience. But I think it starts from understanding who the audience is and creating that strong content. Without those two things, everything else is not going to get you very far. I think the people who are really succeeding in this are putting a lot of time into it, really focusing on excellence and just kind of changing all the time.
Like week by week, month by month, understanding how the world is changing, how this particular world is changing so that they can keep up. And if you don't like that idea, well, there's other things you can do. But I would say if your goal is to succeed on TikTok with short-form content, then it is very much a you better pay attention to what's happening week by week kind of thing. So that's my take on that. Good luck.
Jessica, always wishing you and all of our listeners the best. If you got a question, sidehustleschool.com will continue to feature listener content throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch and grow their projects. That's all for today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
From the Onward Project.
