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A talk with my sister made me stop ignoring TikTok for my small business

I was helping my sister with her plant shop's website last week, and she asked why we didn't have any videos from her store on TikTok. I said it was just for kids doing dances. She pulled up her phone and showed me she got 15 new local customers last month from ONE video of her repotting a fiddle leaf fig. She said 'people want to see the person behind the brand, not just a polished ad.' That hit different because I saw real numbers from a real small business, not just marketing talk. Has anyone else had success with simple, behind-the-scenes content on there?

3 comments

3 Comments

ellis.charles2mo ago

Funny how the real proof is always in someone else's numbers, right? My buddy's auto shop just films the messy repairs and people love it. Guess we all want to see the work that actually happens.

wyatt_green23d ago

I mean, I gotta push back on this a little though. My cousin tried the whole behind the scenes thing for her bakery and it was a total flop. She spent hours filming herself kneading dough and showing the messy back room and basically got zero engagement from it. Meanwhile her competitor just posts polished shots of finished croissants with a nice filter and gets tons of local orders. I feel like people say they want authenticity but then they scroll right past the messy real stuff to look at pretty pictures. Maybe it works if you already have a following, but for a small business starting from zero, investing time in TikTok can just eat up hours you could spend on something that actually pays the bills.

dianab682mo ago

Totally get that about seeing the real work. I started filming me just mixing custom paint colors at my hardware store counter, no fancy edits. Got three kitchen cabinet jobs from it last week, which is wild lol.

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