Why Your Haunt should NOT be using TikTok

Philip Hernandez: I will try and convince you not to use talk throughout this presentation, but we'll kind of we'll go through everything about why and everything about it. I am from the Haunted Attraction Network, I run the network. We are the industry's leading news resource, and I also have to make a disclaimer here. My disclaimer is a financial disclaimer. We do produce TikToks for haunts and for clients. We have haunts that are clients that we make TikToks for. We also do PR services, contract with influencers, and all that. So, that's my financial disclaimer here and whatnot. I will actually be using some client examples later in this, I did have permission from clients to share these examples, et cetera et cetera, et cetera. So, everyone has been warned and my duty for the disclaimer is now done. 

OK, we're going to go through what is TikTok broadly, the context of TikTok, the base mechanics, three ways that I have used it for TikTok, and we'll probably talk a little bit more because I know, Craig especially, has different experiences and some different examples to share. Then I have some video genres and examples we can talk about, then best practices, and Q&A we can answer questions all throughout, or if you put questions in, we'll kind of open it up at the end for broader questions, but if you have questions throughout, we'll be monitoring the chat for that.

What is TikTok broadly? 

So basically, I think a common misconception I hear all the time is that TikTok is a social media platform. I kind of feel like it's not really, technically a social media platform. It's actually more of a video hosting service. Because when you think about it, the other social media networks are founded on the premise of you follow your friends, right? That's why it's called a social network. You have friends, you follow your friends, you see what your friends post, etcetera etcetera, that's kind of how you're interests are developed. TikTok is kind of the opposite. You get on and you follow interests and topics, and you can follow people, you can find friends on TikTok, and you can chat with friends on TikTok and comment on them, but that's not like the kernel of it, that's not the premise of it. The premise of it is to watch interesting content, content that is interesting to you. 

It was born kind of as a short-form video service and the algorithm then has much more data on you. Data, meaning that the videos are shorter and you go through them much quicker. So, it has a lot more touch points to really hone in on exactly what kind of content to give you, so you enjoy. So, just setting that straight. Really when you think about it, it's more like YouTube, and that's what it's trying to do. It's trying to dethrone YouTube. So, just kind of be aware of that. We're not talking about like this is like Instagram or Meta. No, no, it's really more of that consumption type of thing. There is interaction, of course, in the same way there's a huge like comment thread in YouTube and you can follow your friends, blah blah, but it's really not meant for catching up with your friends and that kind of thing. 

So, as we all know, they started at 15-second clips. They grew to 60seconds,  3 minutes, and now 10 minutes from vertical uploads. But, you can also upload up to 30 minutes from your desktop. This, again, shows this trend that we'll be talking about, which is that TikTok is moving towards trying to dethrone YouTube. So, in that way, they're expanding to longer-form video, and that's going to kind of be the priority for them going forward is to really increase their watch time. Because that's where the money is, right? The money is if you can get people to just watch longer every day, then that gives you more ad spend, more time to insert ads, and to get more revenue. So, that's what they're trying to do, and watch time is higher if you can dethrone YouTube, you can make those longer-form videos, and encourage that. So, they're encouraging creators to create longer, and they're encouraging longer uploads and all that, and this has been like a slow creep over time, right? But that's where we are now, 30 minutes uploaded via desktop. Also, to know, this is HD, not 4K. So, YouTube is kind of known, well not really known for, but there's a big 4K group on YouTube, but you can't do that on TikTok. So it wouldn't be 30 minutes of 4K, it's 30 minutes of HD. So, that's kind of like the broad, what it is in general. It's like an alternative to YouTube, essentially, where you're watching content and it's vertical.

Brian Foreman: Kind of like YouTube on crack. 

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, yeah, like shorter and vertical.

Brian Foreman: Isn't YouTube trying to go to the shorts now? Are they trying to stuff like this?

Philip Hernandez: So, it's weird, and we can get into why I think this is stupid from a brand strategy standpoint. But basically, TikTok is like, "hey, we're going to be vertical YouTube," and YouTube is like, "Well then we're going to make vertical content too." Except, really what ends up happening is all the good vertical stuff is on TikTok, that's just how it is, and then you go to YouTube and you're like, "oh, they're just taking their TikToks and putting them on YouTube and making YouTube shorts." But really, the native editor on YouTube shorts is terrible compared to TikTok, and just the content is not going well for them, 

Brian Foreman: It's not fun, right?

Philip Hernandez: They also haven't been compensating creators on YouTube yet, they're not set to roll that out until February. The thing they have planned for February, in terms of shorts compensation on YouTube, in my opinion, it's not good, it's not a good system. 

The Context of TikTok's Situation

Philip Hernandez: So, the context of TikTok, right? What is the context of the situation here? The algorithm that TikTok has developed, I think, is what it's become known for. It's made its growth explosive, and it's also made TikTok a target for, basically, everybody. 

Of course, it's also the most regulated social platform that we have. So, it's more regulated than YouTube, certainly than Meta and Twitter. So, it's the most regulated by far. I know that can be a problem, especially for us, because a lot of times they don't differentiate right between fake blood and real blood, and blah blah. But really, the content moderation on TikTok is intense. That's actually a good thing for growth, because advertisers really prefer a moderated content platform. Again, it's the same issue, advertisers want to know that their content is not being put against weird stuff that goes against their brand. So, having a more moderated platform is actually better and it's actually been helping them grow more than a platform with less moderation. Just a little bit, also a political background, right? Meta started smear campaigns against them. That was that whole “devious licks” thing. That's less to my point.

Brian Foreman: ““devious licks”” what? What's that about?

Philip Hernandez: There's a lot of those like the slap-a-teacher campaign, the “devious licks” thing, which is like, lick weird stuff. All that stuff was actually a smear campaign started by Meta. Basically, they were being like, "there's these new trends that are like damaging our children blah blah blah." Well, actually that was Meta making that up and seeding it to communities on Facebook, and then news outlets would pick it up and whatnot. So, everyone is like targeting TikTok because its growth is so incredible. Due to that, we're seeing all these weird little fights come out. But just to be clear, it is the most moderate platform. So, this type of “devious licks” thing did not really start on TikTok, it was kind of fabricated. 

It's also highly popular among Gen. Z and Generation Alpha, that's like one of its trademarks. Continuing on the thing about targeting and blah blah blah, why it's so dangerous. There's been a big movement recently to ban the app because of its growth, because of its popularity among children, and because of how much watch time it's getting. All these things combine and then people are saying, basically, the parent company is owned by the Chinese, and basically there's all this, and I don't know how to put it nicely. Basically, we're unsure whether the data that they have been collecting is available to China. I don't know, there are so many reports out there to go in, but essentially that that's the argument. Because of all this history, because it's becoming so popular, it's so popular with younger kids, it's so influential to our children, and they spend so much time on it... If you see here the watch time in 2021 for the younger generation, they spend more time watching on TikTok than YouTube, and that's a serious thing. So, now the problem is if China owns that data, is that a national security threat? Is that a problem?

So, that is like the current landscape right now. The government, in December 2022, introduced banning TikTok on all government devices, and as recently as this month universities have started banning TikTok on their Wi-Fi networks, not all of them, but quite a few, and then it's picking up steam. Again, I'm just trying to give you all the context of situation. It's this wildly popular new thing, and then it's been causing all this conflict, not just regular business rivalry, but now like government intervention and whatnot. I think you should look into it on your own as to what you believe about the connection to China and blah blah blah but. 

All I'm going to say is, any time the government agrees on something, that should be a red flag. So, that's one of my kind of reasons, I think haunts should be worried about it. I would be worried about you investing a lot into creating original content that you can't use other places, and that kind of stuff, for a platform that could end up being banned, being restricted, or changed in some way down the road due to federal regulation. I think that is an increasing possibility just because of the bipartisan efforts that we've seen so far that have recently materialized. Also, as I mentioned earlier, TikTok is targeting YouTube, so that's kind of the direction it is going, away from its origins as a Vine replacement to now a YouTube replacement, which is more encouraging of longer form type of content. Anyway, that's the context. I don't want to get too crazy into that, I just want to give a good understanding of the picture of where we sat with TikTok.

Brian Foreman: That's good, I've already learned a lot. 

Philip Hernandez: OK, I don't know if it's anything. I think anything else anyone thinks is important to cover in this, but that's kind of my take, is just be wary, or just be aware. Just be aware of the context of it and just understand.

Brian Foreman: That was my biggest concern too, because I hear everything. They were talking about States were wanting to ban it.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, everybody wants to ban it.

Brian Foreman: So, if someone takes action.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, just so you know, everybody wants to ban it. But again, take it whatever way you want to take it, like it probably is dangerous. I mean, I work with a company, and we have a factory in China. We have many hard lines and rules about data because we know that you don't give China your data. We have protocols, right? And essentially, you're opening to TikTok, and you're letting... So, it's just kind of those things, like informed consent. You just have to understand you're logging into that app, you know, use a burner phone, basically. But, if you don't care, whatever, it's up to you. I don't know, I just wanted to give you the context.

Brian Foreman: Good point, good point.

Basic Mechanics of TikTok

Philip Hernandez: Basic mechanics of TikTok. I don't really have much here for this because. I could, I figure, show people if they're really curious, or we could talk about specific examples. TikTok is created to be used on your phone, right? So it's meant to be used on your phone, so it is a mobile platform. I can show you, or I can answer specific questions about this, but essentially the way I would say the basic mechanics is, you have the option, again, just like with YouTube or with any other kind of video platform, most users just create an account, they log in, and you're given a few topics of interest to identify, loosely, and then you start watching videos. The app, the algorithm will use kind of every metric available, like how long you watch a video, when you pause it, if you pause it what you do, if you're reacting or not, et cetera, et cetera. As you scroll through different videos, then it will start to hone videos and feed you more of what it would like you to see, basically. So, that's from the consumer way. From the consumer way you know you have a few options to heart things, comment, interact search hashtags, search stuff, et cetera, et cetera. 

Then from the creator's side of things you can record videos natively in the app or you can upload them, basically. You can also upload stuff from the desktop, I think a lot of people don't know that, but you can upload stuff from your desktop account as well. So, does anyone want to see? I don't know what questions we need to answer about the basics, like the mechanics.

Brian Foreman: Well and everyone out there probably, I know Eli I think, is probably on TikTok, Craig, anybody else? I don't really care to set one up because I'll probably never use it. But just go ahead and get into the other stuff and we'll come back. Unless you want to show yours.

Philip Hernandez: I would rather if people have specific questions, like how do you have captions, how do you do this, or do that? Then I would rather like do that at the end or answer specific questions. 

Ways to Use TikTok for Haunts - Paid Ads

Philip Hernandez: So, these are some of the ways that I've used TikToks for haunts, and I broke it down into three main categories. So, paid ads, using paid ads on TikTok. I have the least experience with that because we specialize in influencers and organic videos. I don't specialize in creating paid content for anything. I know, Craig does, he's done a lot in that as he talked about on the thread and given a lot of examples about that, so he can talk about that, but I can talk about organic videos and influencers.

Craig: Yeah, on the paid ads. Where do I start with this? OK, I only had two seasons of haunt. The first season I posted my commercial up, which is very PG, all the other platforms, no problem. Robert, who does a lot of stuff for Dark Hour shot it, so he knows all the goods and bads of what to do and what not to do. It was completely never approved, and they don't give you a reason why, and it's very frustrating. Then you go onto TikTok, and you can watch feeds of people fist-fighting and all random mass chaos. I don't know, my feed is pretty chaotic, my algorithm is scary. So, you're sitting there going, "OK? Well, my commercial didn't go through, but this stuff is there," and it's prevalent, but it's from grassroots posts. So, I never really got a good answer. 

So. when I came around to season 2, I decided. "OK, I'm going to throw everything at it, and if one gets through the approval process, great." So, I posted my commercial, a very similar style as last year, it just stayed there, hung up, and never went anywhere. But then I was like, "OK, I guess I got to do some kind of cheesy type, TikTok trending thing." So, I did the old hand over the screen and then pulled the hand back costume thing that haunters do. I took all those and pieced them together, then took a little bit of my commercial and put it together, and it immediately went through. So, it told me, "OK, I need to adjust, get out of the haunter brain and get into the TikTok brain." Because TikTok is not Facebook, TikTok is not these other platforms that we're used to, they're not long-form commercials, they're TikToks. You got to learn TikTok's way and do it TikTok's way.

So, it was going great and then all of a sudden, I got an e-mail from TikTok, and an advisor wanted to come to have a meeting with me about helping me with commercials. Now, I got super excited about that because of the fact that I had this experience last haunt season with Google and Facebook. Google gave me, and I just got a new one today, an advisor. This is literally an expert at advertising on their platform for free. You can pay ad firms, and that's a great way to do it, and it takes all the stress and labor out of it. Or you can do it yourself, and these people are awesome. 

So, I got a TikTok person and I was excited because she was very straight up when she said, "you're making videos for Facebook. That's not TikTok. You need to go study." She gave me homework, and I'm like, "yes mom." So, I went through, and I studied and all that, but she made some corrections and some things like this, but she said some interesting stuff. I wanted to know, I said, "look our industry struggles with ads and posts on your platform, because you guys don't get us." She told me, and if you get yourself one of these advisors through TikTok, they can go behind the scenes, and if it is an appropriate video and just got caught up in some algorithm, they can go unlock it and no problem get your commercial through. So, that's a tip. If you are going to pay ads, paid ads are going to have to be squeaky clean. They cannot be our normal scary stuff. Be very careful of that. 

So, what I would do is I would shoot your normal stuff that everybody loves, but then I would go do a TikTok-style one. Just think, I love how you said this, it's not a social media platform, it's more of a YouTube. I didn't think about it that way. The ads I found, because I don't have that many followers and I haven't gotten a viral video yet, but I got pretty good bang for the buck as far as people clicking and looking and watching. For the price, they're cheap to advertise on. 

I have escape rooms ten months of the year, so I'm advertising year-round. I'm not getting the same action as I am on Facebook or Google for customers coming through the door, and it's probably because the age group is way younger. They don't have escape room money, escape rooms are $35 a person. Mom and Dad need to take them, and that's where they are, everybody knows that they're on Facebook. So, I'm still trying to learn it. I'm going to go in there and play with the commercials some more, but I can say it's very affordable. Just, when you shoot your commercials for the season, you need to shoot one for that. I've been getting on my team like, "you guys are making it the wrong way. Y'all are kids, you should know how this works, I'm an old dude." There's a formula, and I'm sure we'll get into that later, but that's my experience with the ads. If you're going to pay for ads, it's probably worth it to put some on, at least for brand awareness.

Philip Hernandez: I totally agree with everything Craig just said. I thought that was fantastic. Thank you. Actually, at the very end we'll talk about best practices. I think that is your best course. As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm going to try and convince you not to use TikTok. I would say, if you think you have to use it, go the paid route, because I think that's your best throughline to get ticket sales. We have to think about this. You could get a viral video, but if it's an organic video that doesn't have any to do with your haunt, or link to tickets, is it going to sell you tickets? When you have a paid ad, you can embed your buy ticket links so you can it's right there, like the through line is right there. "See this cool thing, buy a ticket, yay!"

Craig: Oh, there was one other thing. It's very important when you're dealing with the back end that you don't know on the paid ads. Facebook has this beautiful system where you can hone in on a neighborhood of certain age, female, whatever your demographic, it's phenomenal. TikTok's not there. You can't geographically, especially if you're in Mexico, MO. I'm South of Houston. Houston, arguably, I guess after the census we'll probably be bigger than Chicago, but we're right up there with Chicago, #4, #3. 

When I advertise there, I can't hone in on my normal 20-mile radius South of Houston, I have to take the whole bite of this Houston. They don't let you hone in on certain zip codes or cities and things like that. So, the dangerous part of TikTok is, yeah, you can get a viral video and all your haunt actors go, "I can get you viral," but it may be somebody in Canada or China, you know, Darryl in Canada, people that aren't going to be going to your haunt. So, you got to be very careful, if you're not in a big city, to really look at that because you may be paying for advertising for people that just simply are too far out of your driving radius.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, that's an excellent point.

Craig: OK, sorry.

Philip Hernandez: No, I was going to bring that up later as well too, because that's another one of those marks against not using it right? It's like, it's not all about the views, because of that reason, because we are businesses that are geographically locked. We're not like online businesses, so not everybody everywhere is a customer. That's a like a big negative to it. 

The only thing I would add to what Craig said too, what I've done is, like I said, organic videos and influencers are my specialty. I've made organic videos that have done really well, if they've done really well, I turn them into ads. So, that's the way I've done it. It's like, if it's done really well and I know that it's going to pass the increased scrutiny, I'll turn it into an ad. But, like Craig said, there are really not really many ways to target, right? You're really just targeting based off of look-alike audiences, basically.

Craig: You're jogging my memory of all these things, I'm sorry to cut in, there's another piece of that paid ad. I can't remember the technical word for it, but exactly what you're saying. Go on TikTok, if you're starting up and start posting videos. If you get something that gets some traction. Most of these the ads, these things I do, I get a couple 100 people, which is terrible. But if anyone's 800 or 900, what you can do is, in the ad section you can then click a button that turns that post into an ad. She, my advisor, suggested that. She suggested that because, we're not professionals at TikTok. So, you get something that gets some traction, OK, people might like this. When you post your post, then it goes to a few people, and if it keeps pyramiding out it will keep riding, and that's how you go viral. If you get a little traction you can take that post, and flip it over to an ad. I did that, and it seemed to work a little bit better than you just trying to create one from scratch that you don't know if it's going to generate attention.

Philip Hernandez: I think of that like AB testing, basically. You were putting it out there to test if it's going to work well, and then you can turn it into an ad. So, yeah, Craig, I agree. It is called Boost. So, you can go into your tools and you can Boost anything that you have, and any of us can. You can do that right now. The lowest amount you can do is $5 a day though, so just it's a little bit different than Instagram or whatnot. I have done that for our clients. 

Ways to Use TikTok for Haunts - Organic Videos

So, anyway, as I mentioned, going into. So we'll go into these next two types, organic videos, and influencers. This is the one that I have the most experience with, I'm going to give my disclaimer one more time. Just a disclaimer that I do work with haunts and blah blah blah blah blah financial interest, etcetera etcetera. Still don't think you should do it. 

So, this is going to be very difficult but I'm just going to be very broad here, so please don't come at me later with like, "oh, Philip, you left out this and Blah blah blah blah." 

For organic videos, I'm going to try and lump them all into these broad buckets, there's trend videos, which is like your sounds, your challenges, your hashtags, your blah, blah blah, anything that's like a trend. That's a big part of TikTok, and TikTok doesn't like that, actually, anymore. They don't, because they want watch time now, and trends are harder. Also, trends, a lot of times, involve copyrighted music and they're trying to get away from copyrighted music. They're trying to get more into the YouTube blog type of thing, because it makes more money, because it's longer, and there are no music royalties to put into it. So, they actually don't want trends, but also trends are what created TikTok, right? Also, the kids love trends. So, I don't think you're ever going to get rid of that section. It's going to always be part of TikTok.

 Ways to Use TikTok for Haunts - Narrative Videos

The narrative thing, which is like I said, now is where they're spending their time and effort. We'll see how long that lasts, and we'll see if that actually blah, blah, blah whatever. Anyway, the narrative thing is really anything that has, just think of your old school like YouTube vlogs, right? This is your stories like, "so I went into the coffee shop the other day and I saw this barista that was really cute, and I wanted to give her my number somehow and I tried..." So, like that whole thing, that story type of thing, or explainers like, "three ways that you can use TikTok to scare your audience out of your haunt," I don't know. Then like the tutorial type of thing like, "today, we're going to be discussing do-it-yourself tombstone distressing," or whatever. Those things are all narrative where you're just there, there's talking, and there's maybe very little music or no music, or it's not copyrighted. Again, we talked about previously the time limit being updated from one minute up to 30 minutes. This is a big reason, right? So, most of these are in the three-minute range, these narrative types of things. 

Ways to Use TikTok for Haunts – Random Produced Videos

Then you have your random produced videos, that's like the commercials that we were just talking about. Stuff like that, that are not really designed to be trend videos or narratives, they're commercials, they're produced, or they're just random people or they're things, people trying to start new trends or whatever. That kind of stuff.

I'm going to put thirst traps in their own category. This is really awkward to talk about, but we're just going to have to, it has to be said that TikTok is for a very young audience, young people are young people, right? So, thirst traps are popular just because it is what it is, right? I'm not going to say what it is. But, I would definitely recommend, if you're going to use that for your haunt, you just tread carefully. I have seen haunts use, like successfully use, thirst trap videos. I'm just going to say be careful, and I'm also going to say there is a reason why the HAA has like sexual harassment training on demand. I'm going to say all these things, but I'm also going to say, again both sides, there's a reason that we have to have sexual harassment training on demand, and there's a reason also that it is. There's a reason that thirst traps are so popular on TikTok, and they can be very useful, but I would just... I'm not going to talk about them anymore. Let's just not.

Brian Foreman: When I was doing research, I came across a good point that you want to make people react, whether it's getting pissed off, cry, or sad, you want them to feel something right? 

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, or that other emotion.

Brian Foreman: Yeah, or thirst trap.

TikTok Video Examples

Philip Hernandez: OK, let's look at some examples here to give you guys a better sense of what I'm talking about. I'm going to show you some videos that I made for clients, again, with permission from both the people and the clients to talk about these. Here's an example of a trend that we used for a haunt.

[VIDEO]

So, this is one of those trends, there are sounds that start trending on TikTok because the whole thing is centered around making videos, right? So, people will pull sounds from all over the Internet and you can use that sound as a basis, and there become sounds that start trending. So this is one where the audio bite is just, "I want to be a marshmallow. What would you do if you are a marshmallow? I would just wobble around." So, we were like, "oh let's do that where it's like I want to be a scare actor" and then "I'm wobbling around" is like him sliding and like falling over. You see it did pretty good because of a trending sound, right?

Brian Foreman: Does TikTok, if that's if that song is being trendy, little TikTok boost to that in the algorithm? So, it's more beneficial to use that song because it'll be more, I guess, reacted to, or whatever.

Philip Hernandez: Yes. Also, there are hashtags that track the trending sounds, you put those in there like this was the marshmallow, the wobble. So, people get addicted to watching the same sound over and over, which I do. Then they removed it,  that's why you see the original sound here, user thing. Also, when you're using a trending sound, basically you use the sound and then it files it under the like the sounds page, here's the page with this marshmallow sound. So, you can see this many videos were made for that stupid marshmallow sound and you'll see like here they all are. So, this is what it means, all these people are creating their own version of this marshmallow trending thing.

Brian Foreman: So it's almost like a hashtag, but not category, right?

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, but it's a sound. 

Josh: It's a super interesting process for sure.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, it's pretty cool. This example is just a regular random, like I said, they were those produced videos, this is just one that's like a scare-cam basically.

[VIDEO]

Brian Foreman: Yeah, scare-cams always get it man.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, so that's what I mean, and like to Craig's point, right? This is PG. There's nothing bloody. I mean, she got scared, it was funny, right? But again, there's no blood, there's no weapons visible, there's no any of those things. So, it's a perfect one to put on here. It performed well natively, so it would have been a good thing for us to turn into an ad, actually, you know? This is one of the things that wasn't made to be a trend, it wasn't made to be like a narrative or any of those things, it was just put in like that. 

Here's a good narrative example. Here's a narrative.

[VIDEO]

So, as you can see here, this is a narrative, right? The purpose of it is to explain something. It's a very short narrative. I'll show you a better example of a narrative. This is a narrative because this was a client that wanted a video to put on TikTok and I was like let's do a narrative-style thing that explains your bars. I wouldn't say this is a good video, and I wouldn't say this is one that would perform well normally, just because it was new and whatnot. It did perform OK, for basically an ad.

Craig: Can I chime in on this one? The perfect improvement on that one is, TikTok wants you to use their filters, and apparently, it pumps you up in this. When I was watching this, I'm terrible at this by the way. So, don't go look at my stuff and think I'm doing it right, I'm still learning. There's a filter on there where you can have the person superimposed, like a green screen. You'll get pumped up higher in their algorithm by using those filters, so taking him and putting him in front while you're talking, while he's talking about the place, that's the stuff they want. I'm terrible about it, I don't put enough of that because I don't like being in front of the screen, but I just wanted to mention those.

Josh: They don't really explain how to use most of that stuff most of the time you. Know it just. They just throw it out and expect you to use it.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, well it's mainly because, think about the audience right, the kids are just sitting at home playing around with it until they figure out the filter. Both you guys, Josh and Craig's, that's great, that's exactly right. That's why I'm like, yeah, we made this because again, the client it was a client, they wanted the video, they already had it, great. I would not have suggested, if we made this for TikTok from scratch, I would not have suggested doing it this way. This was made just because they wanted it, because we had it, and it was just a matter of editing it to a vertical version from a commercial that we shot horizontally. This is a horizontal commercial. We turned it into a vertical video. So, it required no extra shooting.

I would agree, if you sat down, if I put my phone here, and I played B role and I green screened it and I just said that, that would have performed better because that's what they want now. They want you to just sit there, and it's OK to make mistakes type of thing. If you just sit there and say, "hey guys, I'm going to talk to you about the three hidden bars at Hush Haunted Attraction. OK, so there are three bars. The first one is..." I mean, that kind of the thing, that's the narrative type of style that you're going for. 

Also, I just want to clarify, you don't have to be young and like hot to make to be successful, in case that was not clarified. So, here is a good instructional type of longer-form content creator and she makes instructional videos on how to use TikTok, like for people, just how to edit and how to use that whole thing. This is a good example of what Josh was talking about.

[VIDEO]

You see what we're talking about, right? You're just in your house, there's no music playing behind you, it's not produced, just talking to it, and then you know you're going through the tutorial, going through the et cetera. You can see the amount of traction that this video has. 

So, another example, let me show you another trend example. Here's the Wednesday trend, and I bring this one up because this would have been a perfect one for haunters to get on. I'm actually sad that not more haunters got on this trend. 

[VIDEO]

So, again, those types of trend videos, that would have been a good one for a haunter to do. This is one where there is some blood here, but I think again, to Craig's point, it's a combination of Benjy being so popular and so known, he has an account manager. But also, all the disclaimers and everything, and also how there's no weapon, it's not a blah blah blah.

Brian Foreman: Two quick questions, what do you usually use, just the native TikTok app? Making your TikToks?

Philip Hernandez: There are arguments about that, like there are so many arguments about that. I feel like now we're back in the age of everybody being like trying to guess whether the shadow band or not, you know, it's kind of weird conspiracy theories. So, there are a lot of theories. What I can tell you is it's not a good idea to, generally speaking, create something in an Instagram reel, then download it and put it over into TikTok. That's a bad idea. That's because the watermarks that are put into those videos when they are downloaded are read by each platform. So, that's not a good idea. 

It is also worth noting that TikTok, now that they're making the move over into being more like YouTube, they are reading and listening to everything in your video. They're reading all the text that's in your screen, they're reading everything in your description, and they're using automated captioning on everything that you're saying in your video. So, everything is being cataloged, everything.

Josh: Just like Philip said, and Philip, if I may. It really is severe information that's out there, and people for a long time have actually tried to fight this.

[Lag Out]

You know to corporate or whatever you already get in an artificial intelligence voice that's on there, that basically is AI, and they tell you basically that your service has been completed, and to please follow up by e-mail. That doesn't really help most people out either. So, I mean, really, it's a dead-end street. It's either you do TikTok, you don't do it, you do YouTube, you don't do it, or Facebook, you do it, you don't do it. All these social media platforms are basically the Devil's crotch. They do everything you don't want them to do, but at the same time, they really help exploit somebody's business to help grow and to help do certain things within the industry that most of us can't do without having to pay for a boost on a published post, or you know, so forth. So, I mean, it really is a serious deal.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, thanks for that, Josh. I think we got most of it. We did talk about that way at the beginning and the context too. I made sure to give everyone that context too, and also explain the recent government bans, the concern about it, and the Chinese proprietorship and all that. That's a great reminder, Josh, because yeah, they're categorizing everything you say. So, even if you think like, "oh I'm saying it," no, everything in there is being categorized.

So, I guess, Brian, what I was trying to say, I was trying to link it all together is, you're asking if it's better to make it in the app or out of the app. Basically, TikTok knows whether or not you make it in the app or you make it outside of the app, and they know if you made it on a competitor and tried to put it in. The algorithm is a black box, so nobody really like can prove whether or not your videos get lower... I guess I don't really know how much it matters. The only thing we do know is, don't make it for Instagram and put it on TikTok, but there are plenty of third-party editors. 

A very popular one that is kind of sponsored by TikTok one is called CapCut. You'll see it advertised a lot on TikTok. I go back and forth between the two. I'll use CapCut for a lot of editing, a lot of stuff, and then I'll import it into TikTok and I'll add in any text layers in TikTok, or anything in TikTok, and kind of finalize it in TikTok and then publish it. But if you're going to use any of the filters that are in TikTok, you have to create the video within TikTok. That being said, the video editing in TikTok is extraordinary compared to the other platforms, it is very developed, and it's very advanced. 

So, I don't think, personally, there's a difference between a third party non-affiliated editor like Adobe, Premier, or CapCut, and the native TikTok. But it's definitely bad if you try to recycle stuff. That goes the same in reverse, actually. YouTube shorts, a lot of people post their TikToks there, but YouTube is reading the TikTok Watermark in there and it is kind of like sending signals. But I don't think it matters at this point, because YouTube isn't competing. That was a very long answer, Brian.

Brian Foreman: Well, for people, just like Facebook changed things, you know about using things on your platform. I know YouTube doesn't get on with Facebook, you know, so sharing YouTube videos doesn't work. So, what's the best native way to make it? But that explains that I mean, that makes sense.

Philip Hernandez: And it's going to continue to change too, because that's the thing right now. They're really trying to pivot the platform, every day there's a new tool, and there's new blah blah blah blah.

Josh: Yeah, tons of integration. There's tons.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, because it's kind of open to allow people to make their own effects and filters and use them in TikTok. So, there's so much happening in that all the time, so it definitely is going to change. I want to wrap up my big bucket, now that I've showed you guys some examples of stuff we've done for our clients in terms of the trends and the narrative. I've showed you some other people's examples. I'm not going to show you thirst trap examples, we talked about that, not going to go into that. The random produced video section, I just want to wrap this up with, regardless of all of this, like all of this aside. If you are an incredible creator, or if you have an incredible video, it's going to perform good no matter where it is. So, that is the other anonymous or like anomaly type of section. If you're creating incredible videos, they're just going to perform well despite the rules, right? 

Josh: You know, and those tags, the hashtags and stuff, that's really helpful too, just like we were talking about earlier. The hashtags are what links everything together, you know? 

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, hashtags on here, you can find trends just from the hashtags people are using too, just search for the hashtags for the challenges, the sound, or whatnot. As I said, the random produced videos, there's a few creators that create content that they'll post the same content all over. I think I showed an example to Brian previously, and their stuff is just so good that it performs well anywhere. I would put that in this camp of randomly produced videos because it's not a trend, they're just good creators, everybody loves their stuff, and it just does well everywhere, it doesn't matter.

Best Practices

These are my best practices that I suggest, to wrap up my section here. I'm going to just keep going on this from the business perspective. We have to remember at the end of the day, our goal is to sell tickets. I mean if you want to become an influencer, like a TikTok influencer, that's great. I mean, that's fine. That's a different thing. But if you are trying to use this for your haunt, again, as I mentioned at the beginning, I don't think you should. I think you should do the paid side, that type of thing. I think it takes a lot of effort to really devote to TikTok. So, I would just stay with the paid ad and use a firm, like Craig said, if you have the resources, or not. But I think that anything you're doing needs to have a direct connection and context to buying your tickets. So, both things together. If you're doing a random trend, can you take the trend and put it in the context that would help sell tickets to your haunt? I showed you the marshmallow thing, the reason we did it that way was because we could put it in the haunt. You take the trend and put it in your haunt. Is it going to help you sell a ticket or not? That's the question you should always be asking. That's it. That's my point.

Brian Foreman: Like a lot of scare actors dancing. Remember the dance videos?

Philip Hernandez: Yes.

Brian Foreman: There would be a certain thing around October and they would dance to it, and I got a lot of traction.

Philip Hernandez: Right. The Wednesday one like I showed you, that would have been a perfect trend to do a Wednesday one inside of your haunt with one of your main icon characters, doing the Wednesday version.

Craig: Oh man, yeah.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, all of that. So, that could work. Again, making sure, I understand that we want the video to do well, but keep in mind, the person watching has to know it's a haunt, what the haunt is, and how to get the ticket. Otherwise, why? That's my opinion anyway. 

So, as I said earlier, I think you should try the paid campaign stuff that Craig mentioned because you can embed the purchase links in there and whatnot. We all know, when it comes to online, friction is the enemy, right? You want to make purchasing the ticket frictionless. So, with the paid campaigns, you can like go directly from the video to the ticket purchase page, that is very low friction. If you're trying to make a viral trend video with your haunt, there's a lot of friction in that right? At that point it's really just like a brand awareness play. You're really just hoping that people will hear about your haunt enough, that they'll be close enough by or whatever, that they'll see a billboard later, and then make a purchase. That's why I think the paid campaigns, because they're more direct purchase options. 

I think you should try influencers, also, just because they already have an audience. You can vet influencers, you can go and watch their stuff and see if they make the type of content that would be useful for you. Let me save you the trouble, the type of content that you want is the influencers that are the ones that make things to do in your town. Those are the ones you want. Let me just save you a lot of effort here. You don't want like the makeup influencers, you don't want the fitness ones, no no no no, you don't want any of those people, you don't want the models. You want the people who have an audience already, that are localized, like things to do in Detroit. 

So, I did an influencer campaign for Hush, and the people that we reached out to were A) food bloggers because there was the new bar, and B) people who made TikToks about going and exploring local things to do. That's who we reached out to, and that's why. Because they already have an audience specifically for those things, they make really good narrative videos explaining your property right, and they're reasonably priced, for the most part, depending on the audience. But I would say try the influencers just because you can vet them, they have an audience already, and they'll just do everything for you because that is what you're paying them for. .

So, my last thing is, I feel like I said this the entire time... The organic videos, it takes a lot of time, talent, and budget, right? I just think, as haunters, we all want to be like, "Yeah, I can make that in my garage!" Like, we all are like that. But also, you have to, at some point, be like, "OK. Is it really? Worth me spending all this time trying to figure out this stuff? Or like kind of just pay to do the ads? Also, can we pay the influencer and let them do it? And they already have a built-in audience." 

Then again, the flip side of that is, I'll tell you, it was Craig that said this. When we went to Hush, I kind of talked to all the actors to see if any of them had TikTok experience. They're all kids, right? All actors are kids. None of them had any experience taking TikTok videos, and I was just like, "are you kidding me? Like you're the ones that should be doing this!" So, I will say if you do happen to have some people on staff already, that already have the talent, then I think you could consider a strategy of, "maybe we can work with the people that we already have employed. They come in an extra hour early and they plan out some TikToks and shoot some TikToks and just go." What does that cost you? An extra hour of salary time for a few of your actors? If that's your situation, if you have people that already do this whole thing and they can do that, then it might be worth it. 

This is the end of what I had, and like I said way back, I only had experience in some of these areas that I've worked with some people. We can open it up now for Q&A or if Craig or Brian want to add anything?

Additional Thoughts

Craig: Yeah, I had some notes, some things that I think might be useful for people. One thing is, my wife just learned this the hard way, she owns two franchises of the exercise stuff, the jazzercise, and it's yes it's still around. She literally, on Facebook, bought another franchise, and overnight has been completely shut down because Facebook's not smart enough to know that she's a franchise. They de-platformed her because they think she's some kind of bot because she's using all their logos and things like this. So, you could invest so much money on a social media platform, I got a gazillion bucks invested in Facebook, and then one day I could turn around and it's gone. This literally happened to her, so I would highly recommend that you diversify your platforms. Save your content. Don't just go post it on there and not have backups, because you never know when these platforms could just wreck you real quick. Because we don't own those.

Philip Hernandez: Don't build your house on rented land.

Craig: Exactly, that's a great saying. The kids in my place always talk about, "ohh, you need to do this because it'll be viral. You need to do this because it will be viral." What I say is, I'm a marketing guy, I'm an insurance sales guy by day, "viral doesn't pay my bills." I'm not a thirst trap. I'm not opposed to thirst traps, but I'm not one. Just because you got a viral video scarecam, which I never got one going, I tried my damndest. It doesn't mean you got conversions, we're trying to convert to sales, that's our goal here. Our goal is not to be popular on the Internet, that's a whole different mode. 

One thing that I found is very useful if you're going to go to TikTok world, go follow these TikTok marketing pages. There's tons of these guys. Man, I've learned more from those guys. It's a psychology thing. They do it with these 15-second ads. At the very beginning there's always a hook. There's always a hook. It could be, one guy said, shaking the camera at the beginning, or the question like Philip was asking, there's always the hook, because they're flipping through, flipping through. You got to stop them. Once you get them stopped you have the meat of your whole thing, you have the peak, and then I haven't figured out how to do this, this is pretty cool, they'll manage to make it loop back into the beginning. So, you watch the whole thing and the next thing, "wait a minute, I've already watched this video three times." They edit it so smoothly it's a pattern. If you watched these pros on TikTok explain how it works, and then you start watching these videos you go, "Ohh they got us in a trance." So, it is literally a trance. 

Be careful as a business, and this is my insurance side coming out, trending songs. A lot of these trends, you're a business, you're not an individual. If you're using Disney music and doing these things, you better be very careful.

Josh: Copyright yeah, copyright is bad.

Craig: The cool thing with TikTok is, when you have a business account with TikTok, they do this neat thing where they have all the music that is approved for free use. The negative part of it is, all the trending songs aren't on there. It's better than Instagram's music selection, which is terrible, but the music selection on TikTok is broader. You're going to have a tough time trying to copy trending music, because typically trending music is something that's actually popular and mainstream. 

The user filters, I mentioned that before, they want humans on the screen, they want people talking. I'm very bad about showing off my sets and cool stuff like that. That's not what they want, that's what that TikTok manager told me. She said, "Stop showing your sets, they're awesome. Put somebody in, they're talking." 

Then the text to screen. So, this is a trick. You want to write text on the screen, you want to put text in the comments section like Instagram with all your hashtags, and then you want to put audio over it. You want to hit it three different ways because it does affect the searching. Shoot TikToks, don't go shoot a video for something else and try to force it on TikTok. 

Then the last thing I was going to talk about was the social media influencers. I did this a few months ago for my escape rooms, and Philip was dead on, go find the local food, bar, and things to do influencer. They're probably not the ones on this platform, they're on Instagram. Instagram, they rule there. Man, I spent $1,000, so I was like, "this is an expensive experiment." My phone blew up for two days. I tripled the size of my Instagram account, and I got about a month and 1/2 of just people coming to play escape room games from one girl.

Josh: Wow, that's impressive.

Craig: It was awesome. She has 250,000 followers in Houston. You got to think psychologically when you're talking about influencers, what does that influencer sell? Things to do. That's the one you want. You want the one that's selling things to do, you don't want the muscle work out. Philip nailed this. I just want to make sure you are careful, because you can write a check to some influencer and it does nothing for you because they're not selling the product of things to do. But I would highly recommend doing that on Instagram.

Then the last one was, try to build yourself an in-house video team. I'm so blessed because I have a haunt, but then I run an escape room inside of the haunt. My team for the escape room is actually my haunt team, so I have them year-round. We make videos all year round, and we're getting better and better at it. They're good at editing, these kids are good, and they're getting better at it. Then, combined with I'm not paying for it, they're my regular, and they get their per-hour charge. So, really, try to put your stuff through. Alright, that's all I had. Sorry, I had some points I was hoping I could help you out with.

Philip Hernandez: No, that's perfect. I want to echo back to what Craig said about the intros, that's the reason why I started the talk off with why you should not be using TikTok for your haunt. That's called the negative hook, and that is exactly what Craig was mentioning. Start off things with the negative hook. I think sometimes we think about we're just going to start in on the video or whatever. No, you need those little, very short two-second hook-type things that make you pause and stop, and you can accomplish that. Now they prefer it to be a person talking, but previously it was like an exciting thing would happen on the screen or something for two seconds.