Insights on TikTok – Dennis Kelley

Who is Dennis Kelley?

Dennis Kelley is a Digital Marketing Manager at Cerecaptio, but he’s also the creator of the popular TikTok handle @americandreaminfinland.

He has over a decade of experience in digital marketing, social media marketing, managing communications and public affairs and even know the basics of web development.

Kelley moved from the US to Finland and started to document his journey with video content.

–  I originally started creating content for Youtube and focused on going over the basics of moving to Finland from the US. Once I found TikTok, I started to repurpose my content from Youtube, Kelley reminisces.

Eventually, he found his target audience by creating videos where he explains how he as an American sees Finnish culture and its phenomena. Later on, Kelley created a handle for Instagram where he can repurpose the video content.

In early 2022, he became responsible for the B2B TikTok handle, @cerecaptio. Cerecaptio is a global in-house talent acquisition consultancy.

– We’re still in the early days with the handle. As we’re just testing things out, Cerecaptio hasn’t set any goals for this account for the first year. We publish content weekly and recently decided to start posting a couple times a week, Kelley says.

Video Creation Process – Step by Step

Creating videos can be a fun process, but constantly producing highly-engaging and original content can feel daunting.

Here are Kelley’s tips on how to succeed in creating original content for TikTok.

Phase 1: Idea

Coming up with original ideas should be viewed as a passive process.

– I often get a great content idea when I’m talking with someone. I have a running idea list on my phone for my personal handle. For the B2B account, I need to create a spreadsheet of ideas and for that I usually do brainstorming sessions to come up with bunch of ideas at once, he explains his process.

Phase 2: Script, film, edit

The actual fun part begins by creating a script for the video.

– I like to first create the script and start filming and editing right after that. Depending on the video, this can take anything between one to four hours, Kelley says.

Kelley recommends everyone to use external software for filming and editing instead of the native one in TikTok to avoid getting their video watermarked. That way, the content can be repurposed across different media. This enables you to also use the trending sounds of a specific social media platform.

– For the B2B account, I need to submit all videos for review. However, I typically don’t film more than one video at a time. It keeps the whole look and feel authentic and home made, he continues.

Phase 3: Interact

For people that aren’t that familiar with doing social media, this is a part that often gets overlooked. If your video content performs well, you need to take time to engage with your audience.

– Whenever I’ve posted anything, I log off from the app afterwards and don’t log back in the next six hours. I check the view count from a browser, but only to see how the video is doing. After at least six hours have passed and I’ve got all the organic views and comments possible, I start to engage with my audience by answering to each comment. It really helps to get you even more views, likes and comments, Kelley describes.

Kelley also reminds to keep track of when your content gets the most engagement. Try to aim your posts to those times to get even better results. He usually posts Friday afternoons, because that’s when people unwind from the week by scrolling content on social media.

Time Spent in Total

Creating original content, posting and interacting can take anywhere between three to six hours on average. Kelley estimates that for each 200K views you should book around two hours to interact.

Now that we’ve covered how to create original content for Tiktok, let’s move on to what going viral means and how you can do it.

Going Viral on TikTok

Going viral means different things on different platforms. You must look at the size of the audience you have viewing your videos.

For example, Kelley’s TikTok handle mostly gets views from Finland, which has 5,3 million inhabitants.

However, his IG viewer statistics look drastically different.

• 36% come from US that’s population is at 329,5 million people
• 20% come from Finland (5,3 million)
• 6,1% come from UK (67,2 million)
• 4,1% come from Canada (38,1 million people) and
• 3,1% come from Germany (83,2 million people)

– Because TikTok’s algorithm is very location-based, and my TikTok audience is mostly Finnish, I consider my top-performer to be the benchmark I compare other content to, Kelley says.

When you create content and repurpose it across channels that have a vastly different follower location, it’s tough to create content that would resonate with both target audiences.

B2B Viral Marketing – How to Do It

As algorithms can be unpredictable, Kelley reminds all content creators to consider the location where they post from if they’ve already established a follower base.

– It makes a huge difference whether you post from Finland with a Finnish sim card or whether you post, for example, from Italy, Kelley clarifies.

While he was visiting his family in the US over the summer, he didn’t dare to post anything on TikTok. He didn’t want to risk losing all the hard work he had put into creating this follower base. Kelley noticed this phenomenon when Cerecaptio had a work event in Milan and they posted a video from there.

– We posted a video to Instagram while we were in Milan and it ended up getting a more international audience, he clarifies.

Additionally, when they posted it to Instagram, it also got pushed to Facebook and it ended up getting most of the views from there.

Deciding on whether to join TikTok or not isn’t necessarily a walk in the park. Even though many B2C companies, such as Ryanair and Duolingo, are getting tons of engagement and raising brand awareness, it’s not that straightforward for B2B brands.

Kelley is also well aware that their target audience might not be on TikTok. Or they might be hard to reach.

Despite the handle being at its early stages still, they’re already starting to notice some positive outcomes.

– During the six months I’ve been responsible for TikTok, our hiring managers have noticed a trend. All applicants mention our TikTok handle in their interview as one of the reasons for applying, he rejoices.

Other topics discussed

• Whether you should create a business or personal account on TikTok for your business
• Regulations regarding sounds available
• How to choose the best sounds for your content
• What types of companies should join TikTok
• Core benefits of joining TikTok
• Key metrics to track

Customer-Led Growth by Trustmary

Here are the summaries of previous social proof podcasts done in English:

• B2B SaaS Marketing – Edward Ford