The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

TikTok for Business: Best Tips and Practices

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 47

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In this week’s episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I’m thrilled to be joined by Julie Burke (JulesRulesIRL), an Irish comedian and social media sensation who has taken TikTok by storm since launching her channel 4 years ago. We dive into the essentials of using TikTok for business growth, discussing how creative content and strategic engagement can attract a wider audience and enhance your brand presence. Julie shares invaluable insights on building a presence on TikTok, from crafting relatable content to utilising hashtags effectively. This episode is packed with practical tips on how to grow your business on TikTok and make your brand stand out in the digital crowd. 

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Louise McDonnell:

Welcome to the social media takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonnell. And this is the show for business people who want to learn how to use social media to drive sales and leads for their business. If you enjoy the show, please make sure you subscribe. And if there's anything in this or any other episode that you think a friend or a business colleague would benefit from, please make sure you share the episode with them. Today, I am delighted to be joined by Julie Burke, or as she's better known online Jules rules Ireland. So Julie is an Irish comedian and social media sensation She started making funny videos on social media about four years ago. Now. She has Over 30, 000 followers across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. And she has taken the digital world by storm. She's so, so funny. If you've got to check her out, if you're not following her already, check out her videos. They are really hilarious. And I have been sending them to my sisters in particular because we're all dealing with teenagers for a while. So she also sells out speaking events. She mentors women in business growth. And she has even headlined her own standup gig. You're so welcome, Julie.

Julie Burke:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Louise.

Louise McDonnell:

So you've got to tell us this journey. I can't wait to hear the story.

Julie Burke:

Oh my goodness. As I mentioned at the event we both met at I blame my friends. I probably need to get better friends, but one of them had said to me one day, Oh, you're so, you know, I was talking about one of the kids and telling a story about something they were doing. And she said, you are so funny and relatable. You should be doing social media. I've seen loads of people like yourself doing this thing online. So I gave it a go and I put something up on, Instagram. And cricket's nothing. Like I was like, what are you talking about? isn't for me. And a couple of months later, I came across TikTok and my kids were on it and they were raving about it. So I said, I'll download it to see what they're. Into. And I put up a video and the very first video I put up was shared by a radio station and it went viral and that was the end of it. I was like, Oh, this is great. I get it now. I get what she meant. I was just in the wrong platform. I never looked back from that. I said, okay, people actually need this. They need these videos to relate to and say, yes, those are my children. Yep. I get it.

Louise McDonnell:

I suppose the amount of times I'd say videos are shared, not even on platform, but I tend to share more in like a WhatsApp group now than I, than I would do in a platform. So I wonder how did they, they probably don't get to count those views cause they can't, they're off platform. You can't,

Julie Burke:

I think they counted all right, because at the end of the day, when you still send the link to somebody, they have to tap on the link to go into the account to view it that way. So it's a bit of a reverse engineer, but they'll still count it as a view. Yeah.

Louise McDonnell:

So still gets you back on the platform. Very good. Okay, so tell us like when you started putting your videos together, do you come up with the content and how would you even think about putting them together? So for the people tuning in here, they're all using social media for business. you obviously have really tapped into a particular style of video that's working at the moment. Can you give us a little bit of insight into that?

Julie Burke:

Sure. I think that, I mean, obviously I do the comedy stuff, but really I even do comedy in the sense of like, if I'm giving somebody else's business a shout out, I do it in a comedic way. That's my style. That's what I like to do. And, one thing that I had noticed when I was online then and dealing with people that were in businesses and looking at people's products and stuff, I just kind of felt like, you could do this or you could add that or how about this for an idea for selling your product? And they just loved it and I suppose, doing the comedy stuff is great But if you're a creative person, you're a creative person. It's not necessarily just in the comedy side So I found that I was able to help a lot of people with their business online and It's really important. I just can't stop stressing this enough. If you have a business, you should be on every single platform. You should be on them all. I don't care how many more pop up. You should be on all of them. I hear this kickback all the time. Julie, my clients aren't on TikTok like that's for kids that could not be further from the truth. It just couldn't be further from the truth. So I'm always saying to people, OK, Your client may not be on TikTok, but your client's wife may be on TikTok. Your client's friends may be on TikTok. And they could say, Hey, I know you were talking about this the other day. You're actually looking for somebody in this arena. And hey, this person does this, go check them out. And you know, I've worked with a lot of women in business and they've given me the feedback as well. The first time I got a client from social media was such I got such a kick out of it. I couldn't believe it. and again, I say this all the time. Your social media is advertising for you when you're sleeping, when you're resting, when you're on vacation. It doesn't matter. It's there all the time. You've nothing to lose. by having yourself out there on the platforms.

Louise McDonnell:

So TikTok is your preferred platform, is it Julie?

Julie Burke:

It's my preferred platform in the sense that I find Instagram can be very tough to crack. It has a very discerning algorithm. it really leans towards a certain look and feel. So it's a very tactile platform. platform is how I refer to it. All I actually refer to it as the snobby sister, but it's quite a tactile platform. So it's more about sell, sell, sell. Whereas TikTok is a mix of everybody. Anybody at all can take off on TikTok, be successful on TikTok. Your your age category, like the more you engage with a particular type of algorithm is the more content you get. So I get a lot of women like myself doing comedy because that's what I'm doing and that's what I engage with. So I find TikTok to be a great starter platform and then I piggyback it off to the rest of them.

Louise McDonnell:

I don't know about you, but I, I love kind of tuning into people who think I'm weird now, but let's say, if I'm in A& E, right, and I'm bored out of my head, I'll be like, I wonder what they're on, I wonder what they're on, and I'll be kind of keeping, you know, you can tell, like, nearly by having a quick glance, I can't see the content, but I'd see where they are or another day I was in a pub and I was the driver so I was sitting there bored and listening to all the conversations behind me and there was a crowd of men behind me older than me in their 60s and they were chatting about tick tock and it never ceases to amaze me now at this stage like, there's so many, different diverse age groups on that you would not expect to be there. So I think you're so right. I think that it's a platform that people need to probably pay more attention to. and certainly you're doing so well there. So you create the content for TikTok and you repurpose everywhere else.

Julie Burke:

Yes, that's what I predominantly do. I do share a lot on my stories on Instagram. And again, that's just a feature that I really like. And I engage with quite a bit and I can be quite creative, add the music and all that and have a little bit of fun with it. So I do like the stories on Instagram, but for me, TikTok has so many different bells and whistles. You can be really dynamic with your content and then you can put that on the other platforms. A lot of people say, Oh, you shouldn't put branded social media content. So you shouldn't put TikTok content onto Instagram. I put TikTok content onto Facebook and I only started doing it about a year and a half ago. I've 20, 000 followers on Facebook.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, I agree with you. So yeah, I totally agree with you. I think at the end of the day, if the content is good enough, it'll get bottom line. If your content is funny, which yours is, and it's entertaining, which it is. It's going to perform well, so I'm totally with you. So before we get into, I know you're going to give us some TikTok tips. Oh my God, that's hard. TikTok tips I have a question, like, because I was actually managing a social media account for, somebody over the last number of weeks. And something that I noticed, which I hadn't noticed before, was that I found that I could put the same content up on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. And on TikTok, there was a lot of haters. I didn't find that to be on the other two, platforms. I was just wondering, because you obviously probably get, you know, the keyboard warriors, they're, they're hanging out everywhere. Had you noticed any difference between if there are like people that are kind of meaner on any of the platforms or is it all the same or?

Julie Burke:

Two things it depends on the content that you're putting on the platform and like I can experience the trolls on different platforms for different types of content. But the other thing is, I certainly don't call them keyboard warriors because to me there is nothing warrior about hiding behind a fake profile and being horrible to a complete stranger online. They're keyboard cowards. And what I would find is. You get what you put back. So yes, I get comments on my TikToks usually about my eyebrows. That's the one, the big one I get is, what's wrong with your eyebrows, your eyebrows, your eyebrows. But you can filter comments. So I have filters on all three of my platforms. You cannot say the word eyebrow in a comment to me. You can't do it. So game set match like while they're playing chess, I'm playing checkers, like they are just not even with me on the same platform. So if you're getting a lot of comments or a lot of hate comments, you can filter them out, especially if there's like a common thread in it, which I find really fun. The other thing is, I could put up a video on TikTok and it could completely take off and then I could put it on Instagram and I'd get a lot of negative comments and really it depends on the content of the video. So that's what I experienced. You have a lot of the age demographic on Facebook tends to be more 35 to 55 year old people on average, whereas TikTok is literally every age category. The floodgates are open, and if you're putting something up about a product, you could have young people commenting on it that are just being immature and being, whatever. My advice is always do not engage with trolls. Do not give them the attention, delete the comment, block the account, because even doing that, I know it seems like, oh, there's so many, but when you do that, like they have to go through all the hassle of going to another account and like, believe me, they have tons of them set up, but they still have to make the change. Go find your account like it's it's too much effort. They just move on. They give up.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, that would be for trolls. Absolutely. I will say report report like report like because if not people report to you, then you know, your account will be disabled. And then another example, actually, we have another client and they would be advertising that they do. So they'd be saying vaccines in, vaccines in their pharmacy. And when we put that in, like, there wouldn't be trolls, but there'd be people coming on, giving out stink about vaccines, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's their business. I've no interest. But we always laugh because those posts perform so incredibly well, because all their comments assist the post to be shown to more and more people. So I'm like, comment away, lads. You know,

Julie Burke:

you can just block the comments too. So you can actually turn comments off, especially on TikTok. You can turn the comments off. So the only thing that people can do with the video is either like it or share it. But they can't comment. That drives them insane. So if you're putting up a video and you know that you're going to get a lot of backbiting or whatever, turn the comments off. like at the end of the day, if you're running an ad, if I drove past an ad now on a billboard, I would not stop to have a debate with the billboard. So why let them have the debate online? If they have an issue with the product, let them make a comment to the manufacturer or to the business themselves directly, but just remove the option of having that conversation online.

Louise McDonnell:

yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So you have brilliant TikTok tips. I've said it wrong again. Will you share with us? Cause I know this is something you shared at SocialMediaFest Ireland and I thought they were fabulous. I was like, I have to have this girl on my podcast.

Julie Burke:

And this is funny because I actually did a video this morning. I'm actually wearing this blouse and I did. Julie, give us your five TikTok tips. I don't know why we keep trying to use the three T's in the one go, but we're going to go with it, Louise. So I'm going to give you quite a few great tips today. One of them is always use your own hashtag. So when you set up an account, your account name has to be original. You can't have the same account name as anyone else. So that means that that hashtag is unique to you. to you. And that means the more you build your brand, the more you build your name, that hashtag is connected. So my hashtag is JulesRulesIRL. Every single video I put up on any platform has that hashtag. And that means that if anyone looks at any of my viral content and taps on the hashtag JulesRulesIRL. It's JulesRulesIRL. All my stuff comes up for them. from the get go, always use your original hashtag on all your content. The other thing I'd say to you is be yourself and be genuine. People see right through the fake stuff all the time. They see through the staged stuff. You know people are, we're very discerning now, and Really, our attention span has dropped so much. So before the average attention span would have been the length of a full advertisement on TV, our attention span now is averaging between 10 and 15 seconds. So if the person doesn't like the ad or doesn't like the hook, they're gone. You've lost them. So that's really important to be genuine, because if they're turned off in the first 10 to 15 seconds, they're gone. The other thing that I would say is, Don't be afraid to put your content out there. I know there are a lot of businesses watching this going. We're not setting up social media. We're just going to give room for people to give out. And as I said before, if you don't put up a social media brand and start leading and dictating how your brand is talked about, we're Other people will do that for you and it will not be in a nice light. my advice is always, why wouldn't you talk about your brand and share with people how proud you are of what you've produced or your business or your product? And if there is an issue, if somebody does reach out and say, I'm not happy with this or I'm, thank you so much for your feedback, please reach out to us. Here's our email address and let's go and try and resolve this issue for you. And that's far more important. The other thing is people don't trust people that don't have social media. They start to question it. They're like. This is a big brand or this is a big product. Why don't they have social media? So that's the other side of it. You can actually make people quite suspicious of the fact that you don't have social media. Piggybacking is one of my favorite things to do. I've coined that phrase. So, It's mine. I must copyright it. But basically what I do is, you know, people will say to me as well I don't have time to make all this content, Julie. I can't make content for this and this and this. And so I always say pick your favourite platform, if it's Facebook or whatever, and do your content on one platform, and then just piggyback it off the rest. Just put it up on all the rest. I prefer to make my content on TikTok and then I take that video, it's immediately in my phone gallery and I put it across all the other platforms and it's great. So it's a great way to do one video and one size fits all. And my, my content does very, very well. And I think if your content is of good quality, it really doesn't matter, especially when you're starting out. If you're, you don't have the budget for a big social media campaign or you don't have the budget to hire a marketing person, it's a great way to start out. You know, you can always look at that down the line.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, I always say that like your website is, tells people who you are and your social media tells them what you're doing right now. I always say that when somebody is trying to figure out if they're going to do business with somebody, whether they're selling a product or a service, one of the biggest things is trust. It's like, do I trust them to give them my money? So if you're selling a product, and I know this from personal experience and from running campaigns in our agency, but even myself as a user. I've got caught recently, I know it's a bit of an issue online that, you have these websites that are kind of giving the impression that they're based in Ireland or the UK, but they're actually based in the other part of the world, very, very far away. And when you order something from them and it takes three weeks to arrive, that's an issue because, you know, if you needed something, but not only that, then if you have to return it becomes a huge issue. So when I go through their social media accounts now, I'm trying to look for evidence of Do they look like they're in the country that they say they're in, or can I see a real person associated with that business? And if I see a real person as opposed to just, you know, these kind of overly graphic videos or content, a real person for me is going to give me a little bit more trust that that person, that that business exists in the real world. And if you're selling a service, it's even more important because you're the person who's delivering the service that they need to get to know and like and trust, yeah, I think you're, you're dead right. Like you have to be on social media. You have to put yourself out there because you're just going to, you're just going to have more exposure.

Julie Burke:

Yeah. And one of the dead giveaways I find for. Pages like that is it might have an Irish website. So it might say like julesrules. ie, but then when you go to purchase, like you said, you discover that it's actually in a foreign country and it's going to take weeks to come. And, you're a bit kind of even dubious about the fact that you've put your personal information on a site like that. One of the dead giveaways for me is that the videos are often done by AI. So in other words, they're voiced over by an automatic robot recording. They're not actually a genuine person selling it. And. The other tip I wanted to share kind of ties into all of this. So people often say to me, but Julie, I don't want to be on social media. I don't want my face on social media. And my answer to them is this. When you buy something, you like to see the person you're buying from. And more than ever, we buy a story. So we hear about a honey. company and they've set it up from scratch and they're fifth generation honey beekeepers and they've this wonderful story and you say to yourself, I want to support that business as opposed to buying from a big, huge conglomerate that I've never, I'm never going to, they're faceless. They mean nothing to me. So your story matters, but here's the beauty of it. You don't have to talk. So if your fear is, Oh, I'm going to sound weird on a video and I don't want to do it. Oh, I hate my voice. You don't have to talk. If you look at Carl Henry, the personal trainer guy, and everybody knows Carl Henry pretty much in Ireland. We all know him. And if you look at his content, I would say 90 percent of Carl's content, he doesn't talk. He sits on the floor and he does this. Point, point, point, up around like a clock and then he puts the text in afterwards and it might be something like Five tips to get you started on your fitness journey and five things you should have in your fridge for Starting a healthy journey things like that. So they're very Quick hits. People see his face. They know it's his genuine page, but he's not talking. So there's lots of ways around those issues of, I don't want to always be the face of it, but you can every so often just put your face out there so people can see that you're legitimate and you're a genuine company or a genuine business and that you are local or because it means a lot to people to support local, you know.

Louise McDonnell:

It does I completely agree and like again I love that point that you're saying like you don't have to speak to camera to be on video let's say you're an artist or you're making something you could put a time lapse on you could just have even a series of. Photos that you put together and to create a video. And then a great thing we get our clients to do all the time is to send us voice notes. So we get a voice note and like if you have a voice note on your phone, you can quickly highlight it and then email it to yourself. Then you got it on your computer. You can upload that to Canva and overlay that with your images and your videos. And all of a sudden you've got a really cool video with your voice and your face that you But you're not having to speak to camera and that's super easy, like even to create loads, batch create those and you'll have some for a long time. So yeah, you're so right. and I think as more and more AI videos start to be created, I would say to people, don't, don't do it. Like just because all you're going to do is you're going to look like those fake websites from the other side of the world. That's all they create. And do you want to be in the same category as them? Be yourself, stand out and tell your story. I remember another, I was mentoring another, a company and they lived, I think in one of the islands off County Mayo or somewhere like that, they live somewhere kind of lovely and rural and wild. And they were selling a, some kind of a chutney and they were trying to look like everyone else. So sometimes when people are in business, they want to look like the big brands because then they feel good as the big brand. In the chat, but tell me, I was like, tell me what's different about your product. Tell me what's different. And tell me what's, and eventually. Eventually I was able to pull out of them, oh yeah, that the variety of apples that grew wherever they were, were unique to that location and they weren't anywhere else in the world. That's your story. Now I want it. That's your selling point. Exactly. I love all those tips, I love all those tips. Have you seen any changes in the last few months that you can predict that are going to happen, let's say coming into 2025? What do you see

Julie Burke:

I've become a little bit disappointed I think in Misinformation. So there's an awful lot of misinformation out there. And I think that people are very, very quick to believe something online. So they think, like, I have a phone, you have a phone. I could do a video tomorrow, not put my face to it at all. Voiceover something and be like can you believe this? And say something terrible, an awful rumor about you. Okay, it's completely untrue, but if enough people see that they just assume it's oh, well, it must be true because it's on the internet and something that I really am trying to Educate parents in particular about is teach your children some critical thinking Teach your children not to believe everything they read, including the papers, media even from their friends. They should learn by now that rumors happen all the time and to really start to take some time to think about things and ask, does that really make sense? And do you really think that's true? Like, you know I just want them to have a little bit more critical thinking and do a little bit more research before they jump on a bandwagon. And we've seen it happen to quite a few people where people have been canceled, people have had their whole reputation, their careers, absolutely decimated. Turns out it's completely untrue. So I'm very cautious of watching content online that doesn't Talks about people in a very negative light without having done proper due diligence and research.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, I suppose it comes down to like, be kind, you know, Okay. So that's one big trend. Anything else then, Julie? So for anybody heading into 2025, cause we're so, we're so near to the stage.

Julie Burke:

I would just say, make the commitment to yourself. If you said, if you made a commitment to yourself that we're going to do one piece of content a week for the next 52 weeks, sit down in January or even sit down now in the couple of weeks before December, the year's not over yet. I guarantee you, you could come up with 52 ideas. And this is something I say to a lot of businesses. I say, open the diary to your team. Don't just assume that you're the only person that has a good idea. Say to your team, listen, here's a page. If anyone has an idea about content that we can put up on our page, I want you to write it down. And then we'll just set up a schedule of, oh, OK. I'm stuck for time today, but tomorrow I need to do a TikTok or I need to do a video. Oh, that's a great idea and that's quite relevant at the moment because we were doing this project. So let's do a video on this tomorrow and you would be amazed at the inspiration and you could easily come up with 50, 52 ideas. You don't even have to have the 50 to start with. If you even had 20 or 30 ideas, once you start, then it just explodes and expands. And it's the same with my content. I mean, it started with one video and then I thought, Oh my God, how am I going to come up with more? And it was just through different conversations that I'd have. I'd go, Oh, that's an idea. Now that's an idea for a video. And that just happens organically then. But I can promise you, if you sat with your team, you could come up with 20 ideas straight away.

Louise McDonnell:

I'm going to give an unmercifully plug from, from my 2025 social media content planner. that is a great tool for your team to work with as well. There's 400 prompts in it, like for special days. And those special days are wonderful for just giving you ideas for inspiration. And I would actually say, Julie, I think if you have, 14 or 15 really good pieces of content, repurpose them twice or three times, you're done for the year. Because, your video that we spoke about before we started recording about the school jumpers, because it really is, it's like Julie had the conversation in my house about the kids going back to school and what they'll wear and what they won't wear. that's going to fly every September. Like every September you can just take that out and it's going to go because it's going to be relevant every single year. So yeah, so there's my my little plug again for 25, 2025 social media planner and guide available on Amazon soon. The Kindle version is there. Amazon are just being a bit weird about the print edition, but yeah, 400 ideas for content in that and lots of chat, GBT prompts and AI tips as well. Fantastic. There you go. So it's ready for you. Well, it's just, you know what, in this AI world, people are what's going to make, you know, it's the individual input of the people that makes the content different. The AI just makes, it faster. And anything you can do faster and get better results, I think is a win win for us. Julie, thank you so much for coming on. You've been a wonderful guest. People want to find you. They're going to find you under Jewel's rules. IRL? IRL.

Julie Burke:

That's the one. I'm on all platforms as I just advised everybody to do themselves. I'm everywhere.

Louise McDonnell:

Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay. Look, I look forward to continuing to watch your success on social media. I love your videos. If you haven't checked Julie out, go check her out. She is amazing. Hilarious really, really funny. And she has a way with words and she has a way with describing situations. And she's given us a wonderful tips here today. And I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Julie Burke:

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Louise. It was great fun.

Louise McDonnell:

You're welcome.