Digital Buzz: Navigating the Shocks of a Potential TikTok Ban and Social Media Versatility

Welcome to the Mindful Bytes podcast presented by KillerB Studios. Open your minds as we dive into conversations about the world of tech and the art behind using it purposefully.

Did you see what I put on the digital buzz this morning?

I did not, but. I think I know what you're going to say.

Yup. So here's what it was. Is the buzz? Here's the buzz for TikTok right now, the US ban still looms. It's still happening right, like they're still talking about, they're still trying to ban TikTok and it says TikTok faces a potential US ban as a new bill aimed to preventing foreign-owned social media platforms from compromising national security gains traction. I'm not going to go into too much into the whole details. You can definitely do searches online and read all about it, but this TikTok ban is still there, like there's still. This is still a lot of stuff going on right now that I think we need to be aware of, especially as businesses. We're entering into different platforms. What should we be using? Is this the right platform? And I don't want to get like in the political side of this discussion because there's a lot there and like we don't need to talk about that. We're just looking at saying, hey, what are the right platforms to be on that are the most effective for your business and that's going to be different for everybody.

I mean, I have taken a deeper dive in it. You know I am not shy to express that TikTok is actually my favorite platform of choice personally to use, and I think that as long as TikTok is around, there's going to be someone trying to ban it in the Senate or whatever. But I think it's going to be really, really hard for it to happen, to actually happen again because of what I'm reading, because of the concerns about the retaliation that would happen if they did ban it and also the effect that it could have on other trade issues for the US, bigger with China. So I think that, yeah, if you don't dig deeper, that it could be like kind of scary to make it seem like it's actually going to happen, but personally I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.

So, yeah, so here's my question, because I saw, like the posts that TikTok put out. Tiktok put out a post across their whole app and this is one of the things that I know that they're concerned about too, with a foreign country, that they could actually, you know, ignite this more too, like to cause like disruption in the US, and their big message was I have a picture of it here so stop the TikTok ban. And it's about Congress is planning to ban TikTok. Speak up now. The government is trying to take your freedom of expression away, stuff like that, which I can see where they're coming from, but I'm like, ooh, that could light up a lot of problems too, especially if it's looked at as a foreign country doing that here. So here's my question for you what if it does happen? I mean like, what should we be thinking about? Because I mean I think that will it happen. I mean I'm looking at going, I'm with you like it's probably going to be hard from the push, but what if it does? Like?

When it comes to businesses and stuff like, for instance, let's even talk about just recently, another one of the big things that happened was Facebook, the Facebook and Instagram outage. How huge was that, and not only that. Think about the outage that was right before that. That wasn't even with a social platform, but it was with cell phones and all that. Everybody's cell phones stopped working. So it's like there's things that even I can think. Well, that might not happen, it's probably very slim. But if it does, what should we be thinking about?

Yeah, I mean exactly like what you said. There's not currently any sort of ban on meta, but yeah, they had a huge outage and some people may not have noticed, but for people like us and what we do, that put a huge damper in the day because it's like if you need to be scheduling posts or whatever it may be, it was disrupted and so there was scrambling going on and all of that, which, again, it was just a huge reminder of taking a step back and thinking about like, do you have a good strategy in place for platforms and things that you actually own, versus like we always talk about least property, that type of thing.

So that's like I love thinking about these, these deeper questions about these things too, and it's what I love about our conversations too, olivia, because I mean, I think this is important for us to be thinking about all these different routes and how different things will affect us in regards to the business side as well. It's something that I've been doing right now that I know that I know we have a meeting later today as well to talk more about this stuff too, but, like I've been reviewing our own social media efforts to decide, really to really think about and decide if it's the most effective approach for us. Now let me kind of just kind of anybody that's listening, I'm not like, I'm not saying social media doesn't have its place, but it does have its place, but I think that it's. I think more well, not, I don't think. I know I've been talking to other business leaders and a lot of them are starting to think more about this and, just like you said earlier, nobody everybody knows that listens like knows that Olivia loves TikTok and I like to talk too, but I was talking to a business friend last week and he said he said, you know, it's important for us to remember why do people love these social platforms, like they have changed so much over this over the last decade since they've been out, how they're used and stuff, and how people engage and why people engage or why they don't and I know these are things that we've been talking about as well and if we think about, if we really sat back and thought about it, to realize that, well, people use social media as a way to escape this is what me and him was talking about so people use social media to escape, to entertain themselves or entertain others. So when I started thinking about that, I'm like that's a really good thing to remember, to evaluate. Is it the most effective approach for us? Now, that's a question that every business owner has to ask for themselves, because, I mean, we work with a lot of Christian radio stations which, when you think about that industry, there, social media makes sense. Now, there's still a lot of things that you have to take in consideration, like how do you use it and what's the purpose behind why you're doing what you do? Because they're more of like influencers, where it's like well, if we're guides, we have to think about are we influencers or are we guides? And our target audience is a lot different, because a lot of people that we connect with are business leaders. So it's like, well, where would be best utilize those efforts that we put out there? But again, if something happens, we've known people that we've talked to that's put a lot of their. Basically, a lot of them have put all their eggs in the social media basket and they've neglected their own digital assets.

And I think this is the season of a wake up call that a lot of us are realizing, like, wait a minute, are we getting? Just because there's more people there doesn't mean it's the most effective. You can be more effective with a smaller group and so you really have to. I think it's important for us to really be evaluating that as we move forward, especially and be planning for what ifs, because you know, again, if it's a lease property, it could be gone tomorrow.

Like this, this band keeps floating around, tick tock. I mean Facebook and Instagram was down and I imagine how much stress that put on people. And then I started thinking, well, how many people are or freaking out because of they can't do their post or their post not getting out? But then if they really looked and said, well, how effective is what we're doing on these platforms. How effective are they? A lot of, I think a lot of people are Realizing that it's not as effective as they thought Because of what they're trying to do. And if you really look at those numbers and say, is this really converting to what our ultimate goal is? And if it's not, then how much added stress are you adding to your, your workday, to your team, For very little effectiveness, like I don't know. It's just something I've been thinking a lot about. What are your thoughts on that, olivia?

I mean, I think, yeah, it's just a lot of people are not using it in the right way, so it's not effective for them. But I think you know, just hearing you talk, one thing that I actually the reason why I like tic-tac is because there are a lot of things on there. Well, yes, it's entertaining and all of that, but there are a lot of things on there that I've actually like, learned, that I've added into my life. So there are, you know, like Again, you can really, you know, teach people things or that sort of thing as well. But, yeah, I think a lot of people would find that they are Not getting the ROI that they're putting into it, because they're not doing it the right way and they're just and even the numbers right, the numbers lie. So what are the numbers actually Telling you?

Yeah, yeah, and I think that I think that that is something that's just. It's important Because it's to know who your audience is, that you're trying to reach. You know, for instance, when I was talking to this, this business person, as we were going through some process and our thoughts out loud and talking to each other about it, you know, our like, those services that we do are geared more towards business people and as I was talking to him about these things, I'm like you know, there's not anybody that comes to work with us that has ever said I love what you guys do on your social media, I want to work with you no-transcript, because they're not even taking in that content that we have that we're putting out there. Our content is geared in a different way, which is some of the things we're restructuring right now. But I'm like, wait a minute.

If it's easy to look at the social media side and think, well, we've got to do this, we got to put more content out there. And again, this is just me from the business leadership that I'm looking at, I'm going. We can look at it and say, well, it's not really costing us anything, but it's really costing us a lot. There's a lot of time. There's a lot of effort to be putting content out there, but if it's not going to the right people, could we use that time, that effort, because that time and effort all comes down to a dollar. That comes down to a dollar amount. How much time am I putting towards it? How much time are you, how much time is other people on the team, how much are we delegating to that? And then be thinking, wait, a minute, if I'm putting all this money towards that and it's not really being effective, we're not getting calls, we're not getting meetings of other business people. We're sharing great content that adds value to people, but it's great tips and stuff like that. Those are great things.

But I had to start asking myself well, are we influencers or are we guides? And then I'm like well, what happens if I actually said, hey, what if I'm figured out that I'm spending about a couple of grand a month paying people by the hour and said, if I'm putting about a couple of grand a month towards that, what if I actually stepped back and said wait a minute, instead of doing that, why don't I go? And I know there's business people in this community or I know there's this agenda happening, like there's a conference happening over here that I can fly out to and I know there's 10 people there that I can sit down and have, take out the dinner and have a sit down dinner, get to know each other more, build relationships. How much more effective would that be than just putting out content on a social feed in hopes that they'll see it, because we know now that that's even getting harder for brands. So those are the things that my thought process is going down more and more. Well, digital has its place, but I want to make our purpose is to empower, is to really help. When I really sit down and think about it, our purpose is to empower businesses to use digital more effectively, and it's like that even goes to us as well. So it's like are we using it the most effectively? Every business is going to be different because, depending on even the price tag of the thing that you're selling, might depend on what platform is best for you. What approach Social media.

I was talking to a group of entrepreneurs that some of them have been in businesses for a few years, some of them are just getting started, and we were talking about how digital marketing and stuff like that is changing and as we're talking, having this discussion, they're doing paid ads and it wasn't adding up which. We've been there, we've seen that and that's one of the reasons why we took a step back and said you know what? We're not going to buy attention, we're going to earn it. Well, there was one person there that said that they do boost and they get a lot of hits. Now, I still didn't get a clear definition of what they mean by hits. I kept asking, and kind of probing at that, like what do you mean a hit? Like, are they actually buying something or what it sounded like they might have been, but I didn't get a definite answer on that.

But when I realized later what they actually sold and made more sense, I'm like okay, well, I believe that this person sells candles. Okay, well, if you sell candles, that's a very small priced item that you could probably sell a lot easier across these social platforms, these digital platforms, because a lot of those things are easier. You know, you're getting people like, right at that moment, like you're interrupting them, but you're like, oh man, yeah, I've always wanted that candle. You could target people and do that. I can see how that might work. But if you're trying to sell something that's thousands of dollars.

That's a lot different, and I even I think that the business guy I was talking to he actually said think about real estate agents. And the one person that does a really good job at that would be Grant Cardone. But you got to think about his team size, like how big is that team that's doing that and how much time and effort is putting into that? I think we just need to press pause and slow down a little bit and really evaluate what our process is and the avenues that we're using, and also taking into account our teams, our sizes and what our goals are right now. Those things can shift. It might be like, hey, you know what, we have a smaller budget. That doesn't mean that you have a smaller budget. That socials the right platform, because if it's not as effective and your ultimate goal, you might be able to utilize that budget somewhere else in different ways of marketing through content and stuff like that. Social media isn't the only approach out there, but I think that we've kind of gotten in that place over the years that it feels like that's what everybody talks about is the social media of marketing, and there's so much more there besides just social media marketing. So I don't know.

Just a question I wanted to bring up today during the digital buzz segment, because I think, with what's going on with TikTok, so I think it's going to happen. Probably not, but what if it does? What are we thinking about? What's next? What is your plans? Just don't put all your. I guess my encouragement would be don't put all your eggs in the social media basket. Things are changing quickly.

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