Digital & Content Marketing Success Story

Stephen Humphrey:

So give us just an idea about the topics that you cover regularly or the types of topics that are hot at the moment, so to speak.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

So the video that got me my first 10,000 as I was saying before is me editing an Instagram story.

Stephen Humphrey:

Okay.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

So this is mainly what I do, because this is what keeps people in the page.

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

They love when I give creative ideas of what to post and how to post it. It’s all about people who have this instrument, but they don’t really know how to use it. So when I give them some creative tips, or even structure optimization tips, then they know they can do it because the way I put it, it’s quite straightforward. It’s quite easy, but they just never thought of it or they never… well, obviously it’s not their job. They have their job. I have mine. So I discover these little tricks and tips, and I just show literally. I have my iPad, I film my phone with my iPad and it’s me doing my things and people like it.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

So there’s a lot of apps that I use as well. So I show these apps as well. Some of them actually contacted me saying… well, asking me to do a sponsored video with their app. And obviously I show to 95000 people this app, there’s going to be some people who download it. So it’s interesting as well. And yeah, so I show, I also give tips on what to do, what not to do to grow on TikTok, on Instagram, how to optimise your bio, how to create the perfect caption, how to well create, for example, there’s these effects that you can use. So there’s the perfect grade on Instagram.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

So you have your feed, your posts, and some people have perfectly, aesthetical, beautiful grades and there’s simple tricks to make that. So I show that. So I reveal the… so I have this theory, actually I find it super interesting, that Instagram was the unattainable world of money, luxury, travelling. Those who are famous on Instagram, it’s just the life I can never have, but I want it. I want to see it. TikTok is completely the opposite. TikTok is crushing this. It’s being raw, being natural, real dancing at home, doing fun stuff. You fall, you’re viral. It’s just completely the opposite. So I think that in my small space, I’ve done that as well. So people who have perfectly, aesthetically, beautiful Instagram grades and stuff, I just show them it’s actually quite easy.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

You download these apps and you do it like this, and people love it. But on the other side, there’s also a lot of me in it. So there’s a lot of people who comment, “look at this account, they’re copying you.” And there’s a lot of people copying me, but they can never have the same thing as… I let them because there’s a lot of myself in it. There’s a lot of my creative touch, and I think people like that. I mean, I really enjoy doing it. So I think people like it.

Stephen Humphrey:

Fascinating. Have you posted anything today?

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

Not yet.

Stephen Humphrey:

Okay. And what was the last thing you posted? What did you post yesterday?

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

My breakfast. It was a story-

Stephen Humphrey:

Come on now, and what breakfast was that?

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

It was a yoghourt and granola story. I put it in a little heart shaped bowl and I just wrote, a healthy breakfast in a nice way. And the most interesting thing is that on my Instagram, I ask people regularly to tag me in their stories because obviously they replicate my stories with their pictures, with their… they change it a bit. They personalise it, but they use my template.

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

So I ask them to tag me and I receive so many tags everyday and I repost them on my account so that it gives other ideas to people. It’s just a boom of ideas and creative inspiration, and so many people are tagging me. So yesterday I had my phone was burning with notifications of people sending me their breakfast and the way they put it. And I just give an idea on how to tell your story through Instagram.

Stephen Humphrey:

Fascinating. That’s great. Okay. Good. Thanks very much Angelica. Well, let’s keep pressing on. I think you’ve covered quite a lot of this in terms of idea development. So if we just summarise, these come from things that might go viral or things you might hear that you hadn’t thought about, and you’re like, “Oh wow, I’ve got a content idea around that.” Or these ideas come from your every day routine. So for example, your breakfast routine, that’s a content idea there. Are there any other ways that you develop content?

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

So there’s a lot of taking inspiration from other accounts. So for example, I follow this girl who gives tips on, things you can do with an iPhone. So how you can activate the voice control. And I don’t do this. I don’t go and just research what I can do with my iPhone. But every time she posts something that I think that my audience could like, I just make the video on it as well, personalising it a bit.

Stephen Humphrey:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

So definitely looking into what other people are doing and what’s going well for them gives you ideas for yourself. That’s another point.

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah. Okay, great. And you certainly covered that. So look at what others are doing. Maybe they’re competitors or not competitors, just listening in general and looking to see what’s coming up and going on on these platforms.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

Now that’s why I say that there’s definitely got to be a person who’s on top of it. Because otherwise… I even started posting without looking into whether people were doing because I didn’t have time, and one day I just opened my feed and I see that there’s so many new things and I’m like, I’m so lost. And it’s been only three days that maybe I didn’t open it. So you have to, it’s a job as well.

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah. It sounds like it comes back to one of the first point she made, once you start, you can’t stop, and that’s good to keep reminding our audience today of that kind of thing. Now, this is interesting to me in particular about frequency.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

Yeah, of course.

Stephen Humphrey:

I hear lots of different views about it there. So for example, on LinkedIn, I hear that once you start on there, maybe you should be posting between five and nine times a day. And that frequency is more important than quality. I hear this a lot.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

No. So I said no instinctively, because I don’t think frequency is more important than-

Stephen Humphrey:

Okay that’s good. I hope you’ll view.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

I don’t think so. Just because maybe before, maybe there was so much space on TikTok that you could post whatever and just you get lucky and your video is viral. But if you want to have a consistent, good traction, you can’t just base yourself on luck. You have to create good content, content that you know that people are going to obviously like, and what’s more important is that TikTok is getting so big as well. So it’s not going to be… there’s not going to be as much space as there is now forever. That’s why I invite people to get into TikTok early because otherwise it’s just going to get too late. Just like on Instagram, so many people-

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

…. want to grow on Instagram, but you just can’t cause there’s no space, people follow so many pages. It’s just saturated.

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

I think there’s space, so I advise people to get into it as soon as possible. But I mean, it’s growing as well. So if you don’t get the person who’s looking at your video in the first three seconds, you’re already lost in the feed.

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah, okay.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

Just if you swipe up to see the videos in the, For You page, which is the page I was talking about, like the explore page-

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

…. and you need a hook. You need people to keep on watching your video and not swipe you up. So this is basically more or less three seconds. You got three seconds to grab the attention of the viewer.

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

So you have to think about it as well. So coming back to the frequency of posting, I started with three videos per day. Three per day was good because I could keep that balance between quality and quantity of videos that I was posting.

Stephen Humphrey:

Okay

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

And at the same time, I was also not giving it all at once. People were waiting for my TikToks-

Stephen Humphrey:

Very good point.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t post 10 TikToks today. First, I’m not ready for it. I could be up all night and obviously find 20 videos that I could do for you. But I mean, I don’t want to do that. Well, obviously now I grew. So now for example, I post once per day, sometimes twice, but it was gradual. I started with three, which was really good for me.

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

I wouldn’t go above three and I wouldn’t go below one per day, definitely. This is my rule of thumb and this is based on my experience. I don’t really have a scientific explanation for that.

Stephen Humphrey:

Mm-hmm (affirmative) That’s okay.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

I think that this is a good way.

Stephen Humphrey:

Your experience is critical for your reaction.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

But I think that also you have to see what’s going on with the algorithm, because recently I’ve been seeing that maybe one per day was not good enough because TikTok slowed everything down. So now you cannot have the boom views that you used to have one month ago. I’m talking about months, not even years, it changes so fast. You can’t have that anymore. So before there’s friends of mine who texted me, “Oh my God, I got 100,000 views.” And I’m like, “cool, but tomorrow you’re going to have zero.” So that’s the way it worked before. So TikTok changed it, and now it’s very much more like iniquity broom of views and I don’t know what they did. But it’s, for example, now you have 72 hours to go viral, which means on a lot of For You pages have a lot of people.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

Well before you had 24. So it was much more of a sudden viral boom and then nothing. So I thought that it was going to… I thought that more content was going to be better in these last weeks. So sometimes I do two videos instead of one per day.

Stephen Humphrey:

Okay.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

Yeah. So there’s a key thing that I really wanted to mention today, which is the difference between TikTok and Instagram. So Instagram has this thing called the 30 minutes rule. For which if you post and your photo or video, whatever you’re posting is not getting attraction in the first 30 minutes, it’s hard that it’s going to get a lot of likes later in time, right? Well TikTok is completely the opposite. So TikTok works like this. You have your page with your videos and then your recent video is sent on the For You page. So the explorer page of a lot of not followers, a lot of people in general, even people who don’t follow you, right? And then if they’re interested in your content, they can swipe left and see your profile, and then they can go down and check out your old videos.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

So what happens is that TikTok can see that a lot of people are liking one of your old videos and can resend it into the For You pages of a lot of people. So what happened to me is I got maybe 40 views on one of the videos I did a long time ago, and now it has one million views. That’s why I always advise never to delete your videos. Don’t delete them. Don’t be desperate if you don’t have a lot of views in 24 hours, TikTok is just, it’s not the way it works. It’s not Instagram. You don’t have a 30 minutes rule here.

Stephen Humphrey:

Okay.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

You can go viral after weeks and weeks that you put your video. That was my point. I know it’s a little complicated.

Stephen Humphrey:

No, true. So we need that-

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

Frequency, and you need to have faith and just keep on doing what you’re doing without being sad, because you don’t get a lot of views. And obviously if your content is poor, then you have to rethink it. But-

Stephen Humphrey:

Yeah.

Angelica Siciliani Fendi:

yeah. I mean, I think consistency is key and don’t delete your videos, but obviously create great content.

Stephen Humphrey:

Fantastic. Okay. That’s really great advice as well.