Episode 124: UMG Leaving Tiktok--What It Means For Small Businesses
The recent announcement of Universal Music Group's departure from TikTok has sparked discussions about the reliability of social media platforms. This situation emphasizes the need to diversify marketing strategies and explore organic PR as a more sustainable alternative.
In this episode, I'll explore the benefits of organic PR, its role in building long-term assets, and how I can navigate the ever-evolving social media landscape.
Key Insights:
The Power of Organic PR: Unlike social media and paid ads, organic PR offers a stable and enduring approach to marketing. Securing press features, podcast appearances, and speaking engagements can establish my credibility, authority, and trust within my industry. Organic PR initiatives contribute to enhanced brand visibility, improved SEO rankings, and increased website traffic, providing long-term benefits beyond the fleeting nature of social media interactions.
Building Long-Term Assets: In today's fast-paced digital environment, it's important for me to prioritize activities that yield long-term assets. While social media may offer immediate gratification, investing in organic PR initiatives can lead to more sustainable results. By securing media coverage and building an email list, I can generate valuable backlinks, establish thought leadership, and cultivate direct relationships with customers, fostering brand loyalty and driving conversions over time.
Navigating the Social Media Landscape: While social media remains an essential part of my marketing strategy, I approach it with caution and diversify my efforts. Instead of relying solely on social media, I compliment my efforts with organic PR tactics. By focusing on activities that build authority, credibility, and trust, I can future-proof my marketing strategies and withstand changes in the social media landscape. These recent developments underscore the importance of adopting a diversified approach to marketing, leveraging organic PR initiatives to build long-term assets and navigate the evolving digital landscape with confidence.
By shifting our focus from social media to high-value activities like PR and email marketing, we can future-proof our businesses and reach our target audience more effectively. So, let's think twice before investing all our time and resources into social media alone.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] What's up, small business heroes. Welcome back to another episode of small business PR, where we make PR and marketing super accessible to the everyday scrappy small business hero. Now, the topic on everyone's minds right now is the news that just broke, which is Universal Music Group has left TikTok, which left so many content creators and video makers and business owners scratching their heads on What the hell is happening with social media?
Now, if you know anything about me, I am always an advocate of organic earned PR, something that's searchable, something that's going to give you authority that has SEO, whereas social media and paid ads do not. And if this is not another reason why you should reconsider putting all your eggs in one basket, which is often social media, this episode is for you.
So the news just dropped that Universal Music Group is leaving TikTok, which means every single person who use any of the trending audio, who use any of their artists, and they have many of the top Grammy award winning most popular songs in your TikTok videos, boom, vanished, gone, no more music. So think about it this way.
If it can happen to TikTok and the highest paying creators who have millions of followers, it can also happen to [00:01:00] you. And as small business owners, we don't even have time to get in front of our own audience. The algorithm is changing every single day. So I just want to urge you to really reconsider how you are approaching your business from a marketing and PR point of view.
I know that the number one thing we're all here to do, and that's why you're on this episode is to figure out if social media is viable for us. Now, I always think about it this way. Social media is that really quick hit of dopamine. You can make a reel, you can make a video, and it's something that is a very low bar to entry, right?
Anyone can open Instagram, TikTok and Twitter and post something, but not everyone can get that organic PR, that PR, that news feature that's going to give you decades of SEO. So of course we oftentimes resort to social media. That's how most people start, but this is your warning sign. So I talked about before how you don't own your social media.
So any day they could say that you violated their community standards or some random thing happened in their back end where all of a sudden you get mistakenly flag and you cannot log into your system. This has happened to so many people in our [00:02:00] community, and I'm sure as you're listening, you're nodding your head because you know someone who has had their social media hacked, banned or restricted.
And that's why I always like to say that social media cannot be the only and foundation of your marketing plan. And it can be one of those things, but it definitely should not be a foundation. As CEOs, as business owners, our time is so precious and our ability to generate value and create assets for our business is a number one indicator of how much our business will scale, right?
After all, it's our activities and what we're doing. So if you were to take a time audit of what you're doing every day, if you are spending so much time on social media, I would rethink because like I said, not only can it be banned, hacked, or restricted all of the trending audios and the things that you are using to try to chase the viral trend of the week, it could disappear.
And all of a sudden you're left with awkward, muted videos where you're doing random pointing dances and lip syncing to no music. Now talk about an embarrassment and also just a simple waste of time. I want you to think about it this way. Are you doing the 10 an hour tasks that can be delegated to a social media manager or an intern or an [00:03:00] assistant?
Or are you really rolling up the sleeves to build longterm assets in your business, which is what I call one of those 10, 000 an hour things. Now, social media to me is a 10 an hour thing because you can literally hire someone either at Stateside or overseas to post on social media. And to keep that going, but to really get down and really dial in on your messaging to understand how you can turn your marketing pitch into a newsworthy pitch, how to get in front of any journalist, podcaster, how to win the influence of someone who you follow on LinkedIn, how to have that yes from an industry VIP, that is what we're here to do.
And that's what we help you on this podcast. So I just caution you to say that I always want to start off by thinking. Are you doing the 10 an hour task or are you building a long term asset? Now PR is obviously a long term asset. Social media is not because for the aforementioned reasons. Now, the second thing you must think of is, well, if I am still spending all my time in the 10 an hour task, which is social media, how can I move my activities so that I am spending more time building long term assets?
An example I love to give to illustrate this point is podcast guesting [00:04:00] or getting into a gift guide or getting into one article that you can then repurpose into social media. So for me, I always think that there's so many opportunities for us to get featured in the media. I love podcasts. That's one of them.
If you can just spend your time away from social media, use that time to really hone in on your pitch, which we do in our PR program. And we help you with on this podcast, pitch it to the right journalist, pitch it to a podcast host. Get that one. Yes. Not only do you have a video recording that you can take audio, you can take show notes, you can transcribe it into a blog, you can create audiograms, you can create carousel posts just from that one podcast episode, 20 pieces of repurposed content that is a much higher leverage activity than spinning all your wheels on social media.
Now, I'm not the only one to tell you this, but even creators who have hacked or won the algorithm game, they're getting fed up too, because of how quickly the game is changing. So if you're thinking of spending money on a social media manager. Just be cautious because again, they may not even have a finger on the pulse because no one will know what the social media platforms want to do next and what kind of legal agreements they have or what kind of [00:05:00] things that they have.
That's why the UGM, a universal, a music group decided to leave TikTok, right? Because they couldn't finalize a contract. And so basically universal music group is pulling all of their artists. I think that when we really look at the activities in our business, it's really important for us to look at the truth because I always say all change and transformation comes from telling the truth.
If you can get real about the activities that you're spending your time doing, and if they're truly creating something that's going to move the needle for your business or build a skillset for life, then you have an accurate depiction of how successful your business can be, because it all comes down to the activities that we're doing.
So I just really want to urge everyone to think about that. And next time when you are doing what you're used to doing, which is turning on Instagram and posting, or maybe Doing those activities to maybe try to allocate it to fleshing out your pitch using my CPR method to see how you can get in front of an editor, how you can position yourself as the go to person in your niche and pitch that for a podcast or speaking or a collab, those win win [00:06:00] situations will allow you to leverage a trusted audience and not just some random person on Instagram who might not even buy from you.
Now we also know that with privacy tracking ads will become more and more expensive and it's going to be so hard to target your audience. So even if you spend thousands of dollars on ads, it doesn't guarantee a return. So what do we want to do instead? We want to direct people to our pages. We want to start creating an email list.
We want to start owning our audience by having first party opt in data, which means like a little box that says subscribe to our newsletter. Now that is someone saying, yes, I'm giving you permission to email me. Here's my email address. Now, decades of research has shown that that is 10 times more powerful than someone seeing your real ones.
So how can we really try to not only depend on social media, think about it differently and take ownership of our content? Because after all, we only have 24 hours in a day and I would much rather spend it on a higher leverage activity, PR, podcasting, you know, creating a way to get people to give you their email address so that you can email them later.
All of those things, including SEO [00:07:00] for those 10, 000 an hour tasks. And that is exactly what we're all about here in this community. So this is a short and sweet episode from a news piece that just came down. And you know, this is breaking news right now. I'm sure we're going to have so many other things in the world of social media this year, that's going to be shaken up.
But remember, always ask yourself, am I doing the 10 an hour tasks? Or am I really building assets for the longterm of my business? As always, thank you so much for listening. And if you know of another small business owner who could benefit from this and would enjoy all of our episodes, please share this and comment and review, because this is the only way that people can find out about us.
Thank you for being here and I'll catch you next week. Hey, small business hero. Did you know that you can get featured for free on outlets like Forbes, the New York times, Marie Claire, pop sugar, and so many more. Even if you're not yet launched or if you don't have any connections, that's right. That's why I invite you to watch my PR secrets masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to [00:08:00] hack their own PR and go from unknown.
To being a credible and sought after industry expert. Now, if you want to land your first press feature, get on a podcast, secure a VIP speaking gig, or just reach out to that very intimidating editor. This class will show you exactly how to do it. Register now at Gloria chow, pr. com slash masterclass.
That's Gloria Chow, C H O U P R dot com slash masterclass. So you can get featured in 30 days without spending a penny on ads or agencies. Best of all, this is completely free. So get in there and let's get you featured.