How to save £375,000 and get 10 million views on Tiktok (I did it and you can too)

Nine months ago, I set myself a challenge to ‘master’ Tiktok. 

It was clear that this channel had risen to become a dominant force - even Netflix had named Tiktok as a competitor. Likewise, its ability to power success for those brands and businesses that mastered it was clearly evident. 

And each time we surveyed and talked to brands in the DTC Live community, Tiktok came up as their primary concern, both in terms of how they would both resource and succeed at it.

This article is the first in a 3 part series that will cover the following.

• Part 1: How to save £375,000 and get 10 million views on Tiktok (I did it and you can too)
• Part 2: What REALLY happens when you go viral
• Part 3: WHITE PAPER: Why Your Business Struggles with Creative Production in the Tiktok era (and what to do about it)

With our overall goal being to share exactly how we have saved £375,000 (in comparison to the average British business or brand) and the outcome of millions of views on our three businesses.

I want to be clear that everything I say is just my take and my experience on this channel. I am far from the biggest and far from the best and compared to many, still have a long way to go. 

But I do believe what I have to say could be of value to you if you want to succeed in this landscape and aren’t doing so yet.

For any business or brand wanting to master this new algorithm, my main takeaway is that I don’t believe you will be able to achieve what you want to without radically rethinking your approach, unless you are 

• Extremely profitable (or not, but happy nonetheless to spend at least £375,000 when you could spend significantly less) 
• Exceptionally lucky (and happen to employ a team who are natural ‘creators’ and can do all this work with ease. But, lets face it, many people with these talents and even an iota of entrepreneurial spirit would be better off starting their own business or brand on this channel while the opportunity is still available to them)

If you are either of those, then count your blessings.

For the rest of us, let's get started.

25 years in media & algorithms

The majority of my work and professional career to date has taken place on the channels and media forms that are dominant at the time - beginning in print journalism, where I worked on both monthly magazines and daily newspapers, which, since 2007 has been followed by a career running online businesses through the meteoric rise and subsequent plateauing of Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Each of the previous businesses that I’d started, grown (and sold two) had leveraged a deep understanding of media spaces and algorithms, along with a strong understanding of the British consumer and general public that results from years working in news and our national daily media.  

Talk to the Press, the press agency I’d founded in 2007 and sold in 2014 had leveraged Google SEO, PPC and email marketing, and still ranks to this day top for all its key search terms, persistently outranking media goliaths such as The Sun and The Mirror. 

My private label beauty brand Luminositie, leveraged and won at Amazon search and was sold to an Amazon FBA aggregator in 2017.

And Bolt Digital, my advertising agency which worked with over 200 brands and has driven tremendous success and value for many, including Absolute Collagen, which we took from £1,000 per month to over £1 million a month, was built on taking the best of by then decade of historic learnings and applying what I describe as the mastery of ‘algorithm opportunity’ of the moment, which at that point was the rise of Facebook, now Meta.

Because I’ve been running and growing businesses through media and subsequently online media for nearly 20 years now, I know an algorithm and attention shift when I see one. 

And suddenly, there was Tiktok, with it’s new algorithm, riding not on followers but interests and utilizing vertical videos (not really seen before) of a creative style (not really seen before) allowing users to scroll through them at a pace (not really seen before) and surfacing the ‘best’ of these to its For You Page (not really seen before), where they were and still are able to gain tremendous organic reach.

I could see that businesses that could master this algorithm were rising just as those such as Absolute Collagen and the many other DTC brands that grew between 2017 and 2020 had risen prior, largely thanks to Facebook (along of course with all the other areas of operational and brand excellence that result in signficant outcomes).  

But interestingly, you couldn’t ‘pay’ your way around this algorithm in the way you could do with both Facebook and Google. 

And with our community clearly struggling to deal with Tiktok and the consequences of both this attention shift and missing the opportunity for their brands, I decided to put myself on the front line. 

This time last year...

Initially, I did what most people do and most brands and businesses still are. I posted a few videos, had a few do well but was generally inconsistent and put Tiktok on the to do list as something to get to next week.

Meanwhile, brands and businesses were being built on this channel.

AND people were drop shipping on there! 

Just like fishermen can spot a flock of birds in the distance and know there are fish below, algorithm people such as me know that people who are excellent at dropshipping tend to congregate on channels where there is tremendous opportunity ahead.

This is exactly what happened with Facebook back in 2015 and 2016.

And so I became increasingly frustrated, knowing this new algorithm was rising fast and I did not have an adequate grip on it.

And as much as it sounds ‘easy’ and something to just ‘get a young person to do’ - this algorithm isn’t easy for most, as none of them ever are.

What changed for me is when this video of Thomas the Tank engine surfaced on my FYP.

And this video - and hopefully it doesn’t seem too strange to you - felt like (to me) it was the musical illustration of how the Tiktok algorithm was moving, and the current I needed to be swimming in. 

Of course, nobody truly knows how the TikTok algorithm works (no matter what they say), but all algorithms at their simplest operate on trigger points of 'yes' and 'no' across a multitude of datapoints and engagement signals, such as watch time, likes, shares, saves, comments. 

In the platforms that use this interest based vertical video algorithm, the interplay of these triggers is the fuel that drives content to the surface of the for you and watch pages. 

This visual display of rhythmic beats and persistent bass drum in this track, illustrated by the black, felt to me like the act of publishing itself. 

Just as it was in the early days of SEO where publishing in itself was a powerful signal and publishing frequency was king… 

Step one is to publish. Step two is to keep publishing. 

Use publishing to haul yourself onto the front line. You can figure everything else out when you are actually there. 

Until then, you’re just in the land of theory and hope.…

And when an algorithm is rising, you’ve got to jump right in.

Choosing my mentors

The internet, the real world and Tiktok itself is full of experts telling you do this, do that, publish six times a day, engage for 10 minutes a day, be this, be that, don’t do this, do that…. 

The noise was deafening and overwhelming. 

At times, it felt like everyone and their dog is a social media ‘expert.’

I looked around and I thought ‘Who around here can actually demonstrate they actually know what they are talking about.’

Not because they

• Once had a viral video a year ago
• Or are working for a brand that is already famous or did a campaign for a brand that is famous…. 

No, I wanted to hear from those who we can ALL see live and breathe the platform and are building businesses of significance, right in front of us, thanks to it. 

I decided to find mentors who were the best in the world and listen to these individuals, while smiling politely but largely disregarding all other input. 

There are many who are brilliant and true masters of this platform, but I settled on three in the field of media and social marketing in the areas I wanted to excel in, personal brand and product based brands. 

My mentors were and are Gary Vaynerchuk , his former creative director David Rock (D-Rock) and Kris Jenner.

Vaynerchuk and D-Rock of course built Gary Vaynerchucks personal brand from pretty much ground zero to tens of millions of followers over a period of 9 years.

And Jenner has built an empire of brands worth billions through leveraging television and social media. 

While D-Rock has become a great support and guide to me, and I am lucky enough to now be able to consider David a friend (indeed I couldn’t have done this without David’s guidance and input), Vaynerchuk and Jenner I do not know in the real world and can only be considered virtual mentors. 

But both of them have said - and do say - so much in public that any one of us can learn a huge amount from them, should we choose to do so, and to execute upon that knowledge.

I cannot tell you how crucial this decision was - I would not have achieved what has been done had I let the cacophony of other noise in. 

The production dilemma

Even before I tried, it was apparent that TikTok's voracious appetite for video content was a significant hurdle to getting started. 

This was so different to Facebook, where you could launch a brand or personal brand following a simple production of six assets, a mix of images and video. 

Tiktok’s rapid pace demanded a production agility and cost-efficiency and the pace and cost of video production required were my biggest challenges. 

Western businesses, including mine, were facing not just internal resource challenges but broader macro-economic ones – rising costs and slower output. 

In Bolt Digital, we’d been running a proficient creative production line for seven years, the assets of which have driven hundreds of millions in revenue for the brands we’ve worked with.

But this was not going to be adequate for the Tiktok era.

If I did not revolutionize how I thought about and ran a production, I would most definitely fail Tiktok this algorithm. 

And by now, the other channels too, with Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels and Youtube shorts suddenly getting huge organic reach as they grappled with how to compete against Tiktok and so decided to emulate it.

Unit economics is a phrase all of us in ecommerce frequently use.

You know when you see a brand and its selling a product priced at £20 and has a CPA of £50 and you basically know it has a huge challenge ahead?

I came to realise the same thing can be said for many traditional creative team set ups, now that we had arrived in the era of Tiktok and this particular algorithm. 

Mine wasn’t a solitary struggle, but a symptom of a broader malaise affecting businesses in the West, grappling with rising production costs, decelerated output and under-resourced teams. 

This will be reflected and detailed in the white paper we will share in Part 3 of this series, which reveal our study into the 'unit economics' of the average UK creative team and what the solutions are that brands actually have if they want to master channels such as Tiktok, Shorts and Reels. 

The Edit Squad

In response, I orchestrated an extensive overhaul of our video production. 

We established offshore talent centres in the Philippines and Serbia, integrating AI and using cutting-edge technology to amplify our editors' capabilities and radically increase briefing, feedback and sign off times. 

Through meticulous training and rigorous selection processes, we created 'The Edit Squad' – a team where only the top 20% of applicants are accepted, ensuring unparalleled proficiency in video editing. 

An extremely well known beauty brand said to me the other day, with surprise, ‘These editors are really good.’

Well, I’m extremely proud of The Edit Squad editors, and I have never been in the business of selling subpar work. 

The Edit Squad allowed me to massively scale video production at a fraction of the typical cost, at first for our own internal purposes only.

We now accept selected brands into The Edit Squad, as long as they don’t cause disruption to the overall efficiency of The Edit Squad and they meet the necessary criteria. 

One of our brands has been tracked by Tribe Dynamics as one of the UK's fastest growing brand on social since joining The Edit Squad….

So with production sorted, the approach was simple. 

Quantity, hitting that publish ‘yes’ part of the algorithm, while improving quality, in public, as we went. 

Both matter.

Of course, this means there are pieces of content that have gone out that are not perfect.

I just had to park all fear and concerns over what others were saying. 

Channel operations executives 

One of the challenges facing those who wish to succeed in this space is the desire of many people in social media be a ‘strategist’ and a ‘creative director’ and to run ‘content workshops’ and do brainstorming and thinking instead of actually do the daily work of publishing, caption writing, community management, the uploading, downloading, the transferring of videos from a macbook to a phone, the adding of Tiktok music, on feed titles, cover titles, the overseeing of automation technology that pushes content to other channels… 

I had my strategy and guidance coming from Vaynerchuk, Jenner and David Rock, three of the best in the world. 

When we managed millions of pounds of ad spend for brands, we had ‘ad operations’ teams and executives whose roles it was to do daily checks and daily optimisations, with a rhythmic beat and specific checks and processes followed every single day. 

I needed a channel operations team to do the same. 

I created a new role in the business of channel operations exec, a strictly task based role to operate the channels. 

I hired three (freelance) channel operations teams in the UK. 

Two failed, ultimately because they were too drawn towards ‘brainstorming’ over ‘doing the work’.

One team succeeded. Thank you guys.

All channel ops complete by 10am. 

Every. Single. Day. 

Even. Christmas. Day.

You have to be in it to win it.

This team, having spent months with me on the front line, doing the daily work, now operate all our channels and feed in to creative strategy too. 

But they understand and appreciate the fact that our ultimate guides remain Vaynerchuk, Drock and Jenner. 

How on earth could any of us say we know better than these three?

Cost savings

Since February, across three distinct TikTok first ventures – BizKids, The Notting Hill Company, and my personal brand – we have published close 1000 vertical videos across Tiktok, Youtube Shorts, Facebook Reels and Insta Reels. 

Our primary focus has been Tiktok followed by Youtube shorts.

Our editing and publishing content queues work effectively, not just for us, but also now for the brands we have allowed into The Edit Squad. 

In a traditional UK production environment, and I will detail the breakdown of cost analysis and how this compares to the average UK business creative team in part three of this series, this volume of production would have incurred costs upward of £375,000 (excluding shoot costs) and taken up to three times the amount of production time.

Our restructured approach brought this down to an astonishing £15,000, alongside bringing in the time zone and other advantages delivered as the result of a global team leveraging clear process, technology and AI, which I'll share in more detail in part 3 of this series.

And, I am so proud of how we are changing lives for our Edit Squad editors. We pay our team members three times the average incomes that they could earn locally. 

Most are women with young children and the flexibility they have in The Edit Squad is something they also greatly appreciate. 

I cannot tell you how blessed our editors feel to have the opportunity to work for British brands, and how proud they are of their work. 

They may be overseas, but they sit as part of our team. We meet on calls, we whats app, we speak via our tech platforms.

I’ve even met - via Zoom - some of our Edit Squad editors’ kids and mothers. 

The days are long but the time is short

As the famous phrase about motherhood goes - the days are long but the time is short. 

Endless videos ‘stuck’ at ‘250 views’ with occasional glimpses of breakthroughs, blocking my ears to all those people on Tiktok shouting ‘are you stuck at 250 views’ because if so you are ‘SHADOWBANNED’.

Instead focusing on Vaynerchuk, Drock and Kris Jenner, my role models and mentors. These people think big, they're positive, optimistic, they say yes not no, they are in it for the long term and whose experience is evidence in their daily actions and significant business outcomes. 

Keeping publishing, staying on the front line, learning as we go and improving creative based on our learnings. This will never end.

But during this period, I also stood on stage at two DTC Live conferences and shared my approach and progress.

It was at these, when I zoomed out and looked at the big picture, I could see the methodology was working.

Within the first three months alone, from a standing start with ZERO followers, the Notting HIl Company for instance, had reached nearly a million people…. 

I knew many brands who really wished they could achieve this reach, and these were household name brands with followers.

David Rock has been brilliant. 

I have complained to him several times about how long it is taking. 

His response was always the same. 

‘How long have you been doing this?’

Five months, I’d say…

‘Well do it for 5 years and then we’ll talk about it’, he’d reply. 

So what has happened

10 months into the project (but still four years and two months away from David’s 5 year point) and where is it at?

The results are truly staggering. 

In 2024, we will achieve 10 million views across our three brands, but it could easily be in excess of 20 million. 

And as everyone who knows me knows, I do not make bold statements as leaps of faith or hopeful dreams, the things I say tend to be grounded in truth and evidence.

We can rank our brands in order of ‘success’ with BizKids currently the leader, having achieved 1.6 million views over the last 12 weeks alone.

The Notting Hill Company and my personal brand don’t have the same numbers (yet), the determination with both channels has lead to extraordinary outcomes that, when I started this less than a year ago, I couldn’t have imagined would have happened.

Firstly, along with my business partners in Notting Hill, we have now opened a whole shop located at 11 Portobello Road.

We’ve had our biggest year of instore sales and every day people arrive excitedly at the shops as word spreads online.

And as my personal profile has risen, I’ve had the opportunity to work with Sky television too. 

I have a five week series called ‘Tash Talks’ sharing the stories of leading female entrepreneurs that will be airing from January 18 on Sky 186. 

On this, I've been lucky enough to interview some of the leading female founders beauty and fashion, including the co-founders of Elemis, pictured below.

And I don’t even think our content is ‘that’ good.

We are still only just beginning.

As DRock says, 4 years and 10 months to go....

Consistency 

Just this week, Vaynerchuks team posted about the importance of consistency in channel success. Consistency gets you to the front line. 

Think back to the video that to me felt like the musical display of the algorithm I needed to swim in. 

There would be no tune without the underpinning and consistency of the base line, and would this theme tune be so iconic around the world without it?

You’ve got to be in it to win it.

Of course, you must continually improve creative as you go.

Such is life.

However, no amount of creative direction can solve your ability to produce and publish. And by publish, I mean every day. Once a day, then more. You have to get enough content into the algorithm to learn and every piece of content grows your brand.

That said, although the base beat of publishing IS the same for everyone, and the beat of base drum a firm tether to long term success, the particular 'tune' each brand plays, the particular orchestra each brand puts together, will vary. 

It goes without saying that certain businesses lend themselves much more naturally to the platform and its audiences, with others having to test more formats and styles. 

And as well as improving creative, we have a simple thesis. 

Tiktok wants us to use its products. 

Once you’ve got your production sorted and the base drum beating, and you’re improving your creative, you can steadily bring in Tiktok’s ‘products’ ranging from video replies and duets through to Lives and Tiktok shop. 

Our most successful brand, Biz Kids, is where we have improved creative the most, and utilised the most of Tiktok’s own products, and by this I mean commitment to such things as Video replies, Duets, Lives, Tiktok shop….

Build your engine room

Tomorrow, I’ll share with our experience of happens when a brand on Tiktok goes viral.

Until then, I really hope none of this sounds like I think I am particularly cool or clever. 

All of this actually reminds me somewhat of some of the scenes from the film Titanic.

The scenes of the engine room. 

Little else about the Titanic experience (as it was initially pitched, not its eventual outcome) would be of that much consequence if there weren’t people down in the engine room, the heartbeat of the Titanic.

Vaynerchuk references a similar concept when he talks about ‘the clouds and the dirt.’ 

This is not going to be an overnight project (sadly!).

If you have a hope of some magic button or short cut, well, you may get lucky but they're most likely not going to materialise (such is life), so run your engine room efficiently.

Sort production.

Get publishing.

Be consistent.  

Uplevel as you go.

Build an engine room. 

Useful Links:

The Edit Squad

Biz Kids on Tiktok

About me

This article is part of a special series by DTC Live.

You can find the full series below.

Part 1: How to save £375,000 and get 10 million views on Tiktok (I did it and you can too)

Part 2: What REALLY happens when you go viral

Part 3: WHITE PAPER: Why Your Business Struggles with Creative Production in the Tiktok era (and what to do about it)