Transcript of the Conversation
Jordan Smith:
Tick-tock, and you don’t stop. Tick-tock and you don’t quit. Hey everybody. This is Jordan with iProv Made Podcast. Hey, it’s already blowing earphones out there, but I am very excited to have this next guest on.
Jordan Smith:
This episode is a little bit different than what you guys have become accustomed with, but it’s super hyper focused on one thing that has been in the news a lot. Jake, tell us what we’re going to talk about. Oh, and even before I get to that, I’ve got a stand in cohost today, Jake Whisenant, who is our social media director for iProv. Hey Jake.
Jake Whisenant:
Hey guys. Hey everyone. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so we’re going to actually talk to a local eye doctor who’s got a pretty heavy following on TikTok, and pick his brain about the way he uses the app, the content he creates, how he chooses what he does, and maybe even the successes that he’s seen because of it. TikTok is blowing up everywhere. It’s on the news. I feel like it’s been revered as the younger thing that kids are on it. But actually there’s a lot of people on it, a lot of professionals, a lot of marketing opportunities.
Jordan Smith:
Very cool. Well without further ado everyone, I am very excited to bring you Dr. Jordan Netzel, otherwise known as the TikTok Eye Doc. How are you doing Dr. Netzel?
Jordan Netzel:
Doing great. You guys doing all right?
Jordan Smith:
We are sir. So to all the listeners in the audience out there, typically, and hopefully you guys have listened to some other podcasts, we talk to a lot of people who are value added resellers and different organizations that are working really closely with other healthcare providers and provider owned practices. What I’m excited about today is actually, Dr. Netzel is a doctor in a practice and he’s doing some really, really innovative stuff, specifically with a new social media platform or at least a social media platform that’s been emerging lately, which some of you guys may have heard about and some of you guys may be scared of, which is TikTok.
Jordan Smith:
So before we get into specifics, Dr. Netzel, give us a little background on yourself and the practice.
Jordan Netzel:
Sure. Sounds good. Let’s see. I graduated from Southern College of Optometry in 2015, and then basically straight to Northwest Arkansas. That’s where I’m originally from. So this was back home for me. Worked out pretty well that one of the doctors who’s a family friend was retiring at the time. That was kind of the joke when I was going through even high school in college. He said, Oh you can come move back here and help me retire someday, and just figured the timing would never actually work out. And he admitted later that he didn’t actually think I’d make it through optometry school, but here we are and the timing worked out perfect. And so he retired.
Jordan Netzel:
But there are three of us in the practice. I guess I’ve been practicing for what now? Four and a half years. Three of us. I am the junior partner and we stay busy quite a bit of the time. We only have space in our practice for two doctors at a time. So right before I got out of school, they actually opened up a satellite office. It’s about 30 minutes away in a smaller town that’s growing. Northwest Arkansas is home to the Walmart headquarters, if you’re unaware. That’s our claim to fame, and kind of our claim to anything, because anything that is nice in Northwest Arkansas is because of Walmart. And that’s not really an exaggeration at all. I mean that just brings tons and tons of jobs, obviously.
Jordan Netzel:
So it’s growing and it’s not really like the rest of Arkansas, at least we like to claim that anyway.
Jordan Smith:
It’s very interesting. So for folks who don’t know the area, it is kind of more Midwestern. I always feel like it’s more of like a Midwestern hub, as opposed to what you traditionally think of as a Southern or metropolitan area. Right?
Jordan Netzel:
Right. And that’s what a lot of people ask me. Like, why don’t I have an accent? And I say, well, I’m from Northwest Arkansas, it’s a little different. And they still don’t believe you. And it’s like, all right, whatever. I claim Arkansas, I like Arkansas.
Jordan Smith:
Tell us a little bit more about the practice, it’s Roberts Philpott right?
Jordan Netzel:
Roberts Philpott Eye Associates, Siloam Springs. Arkansas. Is a little town, we’re about 30 minutes away from Bentonville, which is where the Walmart headquarters was, and where Walton’s Five and Dime was when he originally started out. Walmart number four is here in Siloam Springs. Like I said, we’re not far separated from Walmartville. But basically yes, the practice, three doctors, all equal partners, growing like crazy, getting ready to build a new building. And we’ve got another, a girl who’s a student right now, who we’re all pretty much planning on bringing in whenever she graduates because we just need more, more people. But we need more exam rooms too. So it’s a good problem to have, too much of growth for our building. We’re bursting at the seams and every patient comes in and tells us that too. Like, Oh, we’re too packed in here. And I’m like, yeah, we know. But new construction is a little intimidating. We’re getting started on that right now actually.
Jordan Smith:
Very cool. That’s great because I know a lot of the listeners out there, one, they either have a successful practice and trying to make it more successful, or two, sometimes it’s not uncommon for a practice to be in a rut and trying to figure out some different ways to just get more butts in the seats and get in front of more people.
Jordan Netzel:
Sure.
Jordan Smith:
So typically, we’ve got a framework. Typically we’re saying the most successful practices usually follow the following steps. The very first thing is they’ve got a vision, they’re able to sell that vision. So not only to patients but also to the staff members and their office admins and the other doctors in the practices. Next step is if there is some sort of issue, they’re the ones taking ownership of the problem and they’re the ones who are actually initiating the change, whether that be expanding their social media presence, building a YouTube page, opening up a new office, looking at bringing in different staff, that type of stuff. It always starts with if the provider does not take ownership of the issue, it’s really hard for change to be made. Even if the issue is coming from somebody else in the staff.
Jordan Smith:
Next, we always say it’s triaging the issue, figuring out what the issue actually is, and putting together actionable steps to help solve that issue. Next is tracking that progress. This is where we always talk about alignment and accountability, is making sure that everyone’s aligned as far as what the issue is and what everybody’s role is as far as what they need to do to solve it, but also having the accountability structure in place to look at, all right, are we making the right type of progress for the goal? And that’s that last step, which is really engaging your team. It sounds like you guys are busting at the seams, you’re growing. Where are most of your patients coming from? If you could share a little bit of that with the listeners.
Jordan Netzel:
I don’t know. It’s kind of funny. We don’t track any of that and I’ve thought about it even since you reached out to me for this podcast, just thinking because part of that, and even with marketing, you want to know what’s working and what’s not. And we don’t have a survey. I guess that’s probably one of the ways that people do it is just, how did you hear about us on a survey or that question coming from somewhere. And we don’t have it. Like I said it’s a well established practice that’s been around for a long time. And Dr. Roberts worked in this town for 35 to 40 years before he retired. So had a very well established patient base. And then when Dr. Philpott joined him in the practice, he built up his practice really quick and they were both busy all the time. So then a third doctor was a no brainer. And then like I said, I just came in and basically replaced the doctor was retiring. So I hit the ground running, I didn’t have to build up much of a clientele. It went really quick for me.
Jordan Netzel:
But we still do have a really high percentage of new patients. And that’s where I started out. A lot of it was Dr. Roberts told a bunch of people that he was saying, Hey, I’m retiring. Go see this young guy, he’s a good guy. He sold me, I guess, to all these people and told them to come see me. But I have a lot of new patients and it’s kind of funny because I don’t know where they’re coming from. We get shocked all the time to see how many new patients are there.
Jordan Netzel:
We try to keep up with all kinds of social media. Marketing in general though, we don’t have a billboard, we don’t have radio ads. You do a little newspaper things every once in a while, and little public events and that sort of thing, just sponsoring t-shirts for whatever 5k it is or something like that. But a lot of it probably is just being involved in the community, going around and doing, I do school screenings at a handful of different schools, that’s my responsibility for the last few years since I’m the new guy. And I do those on Friday mornings whenever they need them. And the nurses love it, and we come over, then you’re marketing to the teachers at the school because they love that you’re coming to help the kids. Of course they send a letter home to the parents, to the kids that fail, tell them that they need an eye exam and your name is on it.
Jordan Netzel:
And I always felt weird. The nurses asked me, do you want to make up something on your letterhead that says, this child’s failed? And I feel like that takes away a little bit from the generosity of it, that I’m just giving of my time and that’s something that I’m doing to give back instead of feeling like it’s completely marketing. So I don’t have anything on our letterhead specifically. It’s just my name. There is a place where they want the person who screened to just sign it basically. And so I just write my name there. So if people want to, when a parent gets a letter they say, your kid failed the school screening, and they see my name, they may look me up and find us, but I feel like it’s misleading if you put it on your letterhead, I don’t know.
Jordan Netzel:
And again, you could probably go back and forth on that and say, no, it’s just good marketing. And it probably is, but we haven’t gone that far with it. I just introduced myself and the kids kind of know who I am and then the parents get it with my name on it. But it definitely doesn’t make them feel like they’re required to come to us to get the eye exam when their kid fails a school screening.
Jordan Smith:
Sure.
Jordan Netzel:
Little things like that. And like I said, it’s just word of mouth, just making sure the experience is good in the room. That’s I feel like probably the biggest part of it. That was Dr. Robert’s mission, and one of his big things is make it feel like a family environment. And when he was still around and working, that’s what everybody talked about is how he’s always hugging on his patients and everybody just knows him and it was a really friendly place to be. And everyone’s going to tell their friends, Oh, my vision is blurry. Well you should go to my eye doctor. And it’s pretty easy when you have a big patient base. Of course starting out, it’s not that simple. It starts slower if you’re trying to grow by word of mouth. But for us it works well because we have a pretty big established patient base.
Jordan Smith:
Well those are some great points. You could do a lot with putting your name out there and TV commercials and billboards or digital or you know, but if the culture isn’t there within the organization to have those folks not only come back but become your advocates, all the marketing in the world isn’t going to save you.
Jordan Smith:
Well that’s perfect. So let’s get to the topic at hand, which I know Jake is poking me about, okay Jordan, let’s get there. Tell me a little bit, so from a practice standpoint, traditionally not a ton of direction, or just really not a lot of marketing because it hasn’t sound like you guys needed a ton of it, because patients are coming in the door. So really not a need to push your name out there too much around the public. Tell us the evolution of your thought process with things like YouTube and TikTok, and real quick for the listeners out there, and I know I hit on this in the intro too, which is it’s over almost 66,000 followers at this point, and more than two million likes on the TikTok videos. So just start us off. Give us a little timeline of what your thought process was and why you decided to utilize TikTok or dip your toe in that water.
Jordan Netzel:
Yeah, so TikTok has been around, I think they started… TikTok is a different company that bought an app called Musically and they turned it into TikTok in November of 2018. That’s my understanding of it anyway. Last summer, summer of 2019, I just heard about it from a buddy, he just starts showing me, sending me these videos, it’s very shareable and you can send the links. So he’s sending me these funny videos from TikTok and I’m like, Oh that’s one of those things that just the kids are doing. It’s all these kids are just dancing. And I’m like, God, that has nothing to do with anything.
Jordan Netzel:
And then I guess he was Gary V, I don’t know if you guys know much about Gary V, but as far as the social media world, one of the most, it’s interesting because I look at him and I see him sort of predicting, but he even tells you he’s not predicting it. He’s just telling you what’s happening in the social media world. I’m listening to one of his daily videos that he puts on YouTube, and he starts talking about how this new thing called TikTok is going crazy. And he said, it’s the only place right now where you can go and post a video with zero followers and get a million views. He said, it’s possible. It’s possible for that to happen. And I just thought that was so interesting.
Jordan Netzel:
And then you have to go back, for about a year and a few months now I’ve been running a separate YouTube channel that has nothing to do with eyecare, but YouTube has become a kind of a hobby for me. I do lawn care. I’ve got people watching me mow my grass, something called The Lawn Tools, and The Lawn Tools, that’s my brother and I. I’ve been working on building that one up and it’s been fun, and I’m getting really into it. So I hear Gary V talk about this TikTok thing. I was like, I don’t know, I’ll get on there. Let’s see if I can get some traffic to the lawn tools from this TikTok thing. So I start and I make some videos. It’s wintertime at this point. It was December, I think it was. Yeah, it was the beginning of December. There’s no grass growing where I am. I have permuted the grass and everything is dormant. Everything is boring and dead.
Jordan Netzel:
So I’m just coming up with random things to make, trying to make a presence on TikTok with this goofy YouTube channel. I make just random videos and trying to figure out the app, just getting used to it. And that’s a big part of it is just trying to figure out what’s going on, because it’s different. Every social media platform is different. You have to create content specifically for that social media platform if you want it to go anywhere.
Jordan Netzel:
But anyway, just trying to figure it out. And so I post some videos and some of them, I was surprised, I said, wow, that one got 15,000 views. That’s kind of crazy. And it’s growing and I’m like, wow, a hundred followers in only a week or whatever. And it just goes nuts. And I think TikTok does that on purpose, they want you to feel like you’re famous. They want everybody to feel like they are going viral or they’re famous because that makes you want to create more content for their platform. So I find this out later, after I think, no, I’m just that cool that everybody just loves my stuff. But it turns out-
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Jordan Netzel:
After, I think, “No, I’m just that cool that everybody just loves my stuff.” But it turns out they just pump everybody’s stuff out there and let it be seen. So anyway…
Jordan Smith:
We think you’re pretty cool too doc.
Jordan Netzel:
Thanks. So that’s where I started. Then I go and I make a video in the office, in my white coat behind the phoropter. I you don’t know the phoropter is the thing that when the eye doctor puts you behind there, he’s asking you which one’s better? One or two, three or four, that’s called a phoropter. I’m behind that thing, I make a video where basically with TikTok, you take somebody else’s sound or a song, they have lots of songs on there and you take that song and you mouth the words to it and put your own spin on it and make it something that applies to a different situation than what the song originally intended, is kind of the main thing, but you can put just random videos with your own sound and everything. Those can do really well too. But that’s one of the biggest things is lip syncing to a song and adapting it to your situation.
Jordan Netzel:
So describing the video, there’s probably no point to telling you what the video was about because it won’t make sense unless you know anything about TikTok. But I’m behind the phoropter just mouthing some letters as part of this song. And then you know the video cuts to the doctor part go, “No you’re blind.” You know that doesn’t make any sense because the letters were wrong for what you’re reading on the chart. That was on the Lawn Tools. That is not on the TikTok Eye Doc page. I hadn’t started that at this point. That one just exploded. Out of nowhere I wake up the next day to three million views or something like that on this video and several thousand followers and I’m going, “What in the world is happening here?”
Jordan Netzel:
So I guess that kind of awakened me. That one, I don’t know at this point has 4.5 million I think is where it leveled off. It was just kind of eye opening to see that that was the power of TikTok, you know me, like I said, I had a couple of hundred followers or something and it just exploded.
Jordan Netzel:
So I said, okay, I don’t know, there’s nothing for me to do on the Lawn Tools thing right now, but I can do this, I can do this optometry thing. So I make a new account, I make a one for the TikTok eye doc and start doing that same stuff, similar things and slowly but surely starts to gain traction. It’s all just about that one video. Everybody has their viral moment. And again, if you’re not on TikTok you won’t understand.
Jordan Netzel:
But everybody talks about that when they post their third video and it goes crazy and it’s this weird experience where you’re just getting notifications. You can’t keep up with it, literally I’m refreshing the thing and every two seconds, it only goes up to 99, it will tell you have 99 plus notifications and every two seconds I was refreshing that thing. It was showing me 99 notifications, 99 notifications. And I was like, “What in the world is happening here?” So from there, just went, I posted more videos on the TikTok Eye Doc.
Jordan Netzel:
The biggest, I guess the biggest moment at least at the beginning was when I posted, it’s called a duet and you post a video kind of next to somebody else’s video. Someone had posted a video of their dog that had something weird in their eye. I said, “Hey, I know what that is.” So I made a video right to it and I kind of explained to everybody what it was. Well that video happened to be one of these viral videos. Somehow that triggered the algorithm to show everybody who saw that video, my video, or at least people who had seen it. Then they like, they said, “Oh this guy’s telling us what it is, because we were all worried about this dog. We thought he was going to die, whatever.”
Jordan Netzel:
I said, “Actually it’s not that big of a deal. Something called a persistent pupillary membrane.” So I guess the guy took his dog to the vet. The vet said the same thing that I did and people were commenting like crazy. And like I said, I think that one is what, like four million views or something now too. So it’s just crazy.
Jordan Netzel:
You never know what’s going to go, I guess and I’m air quoting here. I know you can’t see me, viral, I don’t know what that actually means, but what’s going to go crazy on that app. Then you think, “Aw man, I’ve got this new video. This one’s hilarious, I love it. This one’s great.” You’ll post it and then it flops. Oh man, it’s painful sometimes. It’s tricky because you don’t know, I can’t figure it out. And some people maybe they claim to have figured it out, but I don’t think that anybody really knows. It’s kind of like YouTube that’s the same. Somebody who’s will go viral and you’ll be like, “Why in the world is this have so many views?” No one could figure it out. But some reason the algorithm just decided to pump that out to the rest of the world.
Jordan Smith:
When you’re putting them out there, do you find that, I mean saying that you’re not sure about which ones will go viral, but do you see maybe that the original content, sometimes it was better because it’s more geared towards the medical practice or is it more of the lip sinking and the viral that’s already people are familiar with the audio, they’ve heard of and listened to it. Which is better for you generally?
Jordan Smith:
That’s a great question. Like is it kind of the original stuff that you’re coming up with or is it happened on a like a already trending hashtag or trend that’s out there now?
Jordan Netzel:
Yeah, man, TikTok is confusing. I’m telling you. So I feel like I’ve got it figured out and I can make this video and I say, this one’s going to be amazing because it is one of these sounds that’s gone viral or whatever. This is a trend. That they have all these trends on there. They’ll show you what the trends are, but if you’re late to the trend they’re going to bring the pain and they’re just going to shut it down. They’re going to say, “Nope, you’re late.” Literally if you’re six hours late, it moves so fast. It’s ridiculous.
Jordan Netzel:
Because a trend will pop up, you think, “Oh, I’m early to this one.” You make a video about it and there’s already literally hundreds of thousands of videos on this trend. So I’ve kind of quit trying to do that. I can’t keep up. Some people are on there all the time, once they see that they make a video as fast as possible and they can catch the trend and they ride the wave and it shoots it out to everybody.
Jordan Netzel:
I just feel like when I try to do that and I think, “Oh yeah, this is a trending topic, or this is a trending song, I’m going to do this one.” And it just shuts it down and it flops so hard. So I don’t have a pattern, because I’ve done a couple of those trendy ones where hey that one took off and it did really well.
Jordan Netzel:
I’ve done a couple of trendy ones where like I said, it just dies and it does nothing. I’ve done some that original content where I’m just talking. I’ll I did, I put together a video about demodexs. If you guys have heard about those things, they’re little mites that live on your eyelashes, eyebrows, they live all over the place. But in your eyelashes specifically is where we can find them in an optometry.
Jordan Netzel:
Yeah, exactly, your eyelashes are inching now, that’s the point of the video. I was like, okay, this will kind of shock some people a little bit and I put it in there, I said, “Tag that person who’s going to freak out when they see this.” Just to incite some action in the comments. And it worked. That one went kind of crazy and that one blew up. I was showing my wife, because we were actually going on a date that night and I posted it right before we went on a date and we drove 30 minutes away. She was running into the pharmacy to pick something up before we went out to eat. So I uploaded, I opened up the app and I see that this thing has hundreds of thousands of views already. And it was only 30 minutes later. And I said, “Oh, here we go.”
Jordan Netzel:
So she kept asking me, I didn’t feel bad because she was asking me throughout the date like, “What’s it that now? What’s it at now?” And I’m like, “Yeah, this is nuts. It’s out of a million already. It’s at a million point two.” Whatever.
Jordan Netzel:
But that shocking stuff, I guess that incites a little bit of fear maybe is one way to do it. Then other than that you just be really funny, if it’s got a funny moment, something that’s sort of snaps your attention and you’re like, “Oh that was hilarious.” Then you have to motivate somebody to put hit the like button. But other than, I mean, other than that figuring out the algorithm I think is a losing battle. It’s not worth it. No one can figure it out.
Jordan Netzel:
There’s jokes about that on TikTok too. Everyone’s talking about how we don’t know why this is happening. We don’t know how this is happening, but “Hey, here I am and this is what happened to me, or whatever.” Which I don’t know, good and bad because at the same time you could make terrible videos. You could make something so stupid and it might just happen to trigger the algorithm and you’ll go crazy. So it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be great at creating videos, but at the same time if you think you’re getting good at it, it’ll humble you pretty quick.
Jordan Smith:
Well I think you mentioned something that I want to make sure that our listeners don’t gloss over, which I kind of picked up from what you were talking about, which is a couple of things. One, be engaging. If there’s content out there that interests you or you know your audience better than anyone does. So if you know that there’s some questions that they have engage them on whatever platform you choose to be on, but just be engaging, answer those questions, be helpful, be funny.
Jordan Smith:
Then the second thing, which is be genuine, just because a piece of content probably worked really well for you, it might not work for the next eye doc that’s listening to this. But be genuine and stick to your personality, because I know the short time that I’ve been on there, everything from science stuff to the stupid stuff to the funny stuff, you can tell when somebody’s coming across as ingenuine, especially a platform like TikTok that is very personal at the moment and not really, for better or worse, not really business driven. You know what I mean?
Jordan Netzel:
Yeah.
Jordan Smith:
TikTok has been very, they don’t really want celebrities on it. They want it to be this amateur creator thing even though celebrities are getting on it a lot. But talking about the algorithm I discovered you because probably three, four weeks ago Arkansas had hype going. So there was a lot of Arkansas videos being thrown out and you’re a very popular Arkansas creator. So I saw a couple of videos from your page, but the one I remember that was viral, I went and followed your page and really checked out was like the glamorous eye exam that came on, the 13th audio. That was the one that made me go, this is hilarious.
Jordan Smith:
Then I saw the videos where you’re exploring these weird eye conditions and people are tagging each other or people are tagging people and being like, “This is gross. Look at this.” Which is a very popular thing. So I think that you’ve done really well at creating a balance of the content of using popular viral audio, but also creating content that is specific to you, your page and even your practice.
Jordan Netzel:
Yeah, no and that’s been the goal too, a little bit of a balance and answering some questions too. People ask me questions and I’ll try to make a video kind of explaining what that was. But I’ve got another one on tap for tonight that I think my insight a little bit of fear. It’s actually a guy, one of my patients, so I’ve done this with two people. One of them was a guy that had a subconjunctival hemorrhage. So just like a bloody eye, which is actually not that big of a deal. It’s basically a bruise. But he had this thing I said, “You know what these kids on TikTok.” I say kids, I feel like it’s mostly kids and I think it is, the demographic is definitely younger people.
Jordan Netzel:
Just looking at the people who have the most followers on there, they’re marketing themselves to the, I don’t know, teenage and mid teenage demographic, all the dances on there. That’s kind of what they like to see.
Jordan Netzel:
So anyway, but just what will, whoa them, what will freak them out. They’ll say, “That’s gross.” And they’ll want to tag their friend or whatever. So I did one about that, the bruise on the eye, where we’re just seeing some blood on the eye and it looks kind of crazy. Then basically telling everybody, “Oh this is actually not that big of a deal. This is pretty cool and whatever.” But tonight… so I have people sign a release form. We just had something real quick made up to have people put their name, sign it saying, “I consent to be used on social media for Roberts-Philpott Eye Associates as educational material or whatever on different social media platforms.”
Jordan Netzel:
Because as far as are HIPAA regulations, you shouldn’t be showing somebody’s face, and I’m not saying anybody’s name anyway. Most of the stuff is so zoomed in on their eye that you can’t even see them anyway. I tell them that and they, most of the people are totally like, “Oh yeah” I say most people, I’ve only done it to two people so far. But this guy just actually a couple of days ago, I had him as a patient and he has a prosthetic guy. He seemed like a pretty relaxed guy. And I said, “You know what? Hey, would you be willing to pop that thing out for me to take a video?” So he was like, “Yeah man, let’s do it, whatever.”
Jordan Netzel:
I had him fill out the form and then, and then he does it, he just pops it out real quick. I said, “How long does it take you?” He’s, “No, I’m really good at it now, I clean it every other day or so.” So I just video’d him popping it out and I put it to music and like I said, I’ll put that up there tonight and we’ll see if that’ll get people riled up a little bit.
Jordan Netzel:
I can try to put something in there to say, tag that person that you want to try to gross out today or whatever, because it’s kind of funny and then he’s just holding it in his hand and I kind of zoom in on it and it’s a pretty short video, but it’ll be kind of fun.
Jordan Smith:
Awesome. I like that a lot.
Jordan Smith:
Again, a good tip for the listeners out there, no matter what you’re trying to do, those release forms, and I know a lot of practices just have that as part of their standard paperwork, so whether it’s a Facebook thing or testimonial they want to leave and promote, it’s just handled up at the front desk and then you don’t have to worry about those conversations. Some people fill it out, some people won’t. But that’s a great tip for those folks out there. Speaking of content, kind of step us through, went through the thought process a little bit. We talked about that, being engaging, being genuine, looking at what’s getting attention and seeing if you can work that into what already is working for you guys or what you’re comfortable sharing.
Jordan Smith:
But how do you plan the content out? Like you said, you’re going to post a video tonight, you did one in the car while your girlfriend was in the store shopping for something. Is there a planning process with TikTok? Is it more just kind of seat your pants because you have to hop on those trends really quickly? Tell me about how you plan or just what your thought process is behind what content you plan to push out.
Jordan Netzel:
Just really quick, I want to clarify something here because if my wife is listening to this podcast I want to make sure there’s no girlfriend. It was my wife that I was on a date with.
Jordan Smith:
Sorry Miss Netzel.
Jordan Netzel:
So yeah, content. Okay. So It was interesting. There’s a guy on TikTok who started like two months after the app was created. So he was like January or February of 2019. I found him on TikTok. Part of it is that, just like you mentioned earlier, TikTok is kind of geographically targeted.
Jordan Netzel:
So it’s going to suggest things in Arkansas to people who are in Arkansas. That was why you probably saw that Arkansas had the hype. And again, I’m using these air quotes that you can’t see, but that’s a thing on TikTok, having a type.
Jordan Netzel:
So this guy, he’s in Cylon actually, he’s a dentist. He’s an orthodontist and his user name is “The Bentist”. And last I checked, and this wasn’t that long ago, but he’s moving pretty fast. He had 2.6 million followers on TikTok. So he does a lot of the dances. I don’t dance. That’s one of those things where I was kind of like, “Yeah, I don’t dance so I’m not going to gain a following.” That’s what I thought at the first place. I was like, “I’ll give it a shot doing some of this other stuff.”
Jordan Netzel:
So I went to lunch with them. I just called up, well it was like… I had to get ahold of the, I don’t know the marketing person, because he’s at a chain of orthodontic practices and he goes to like Bentonville and Fayetteville and then Cylon, rotates through different practices. But he’s in Cylon a couple of days a week, or at least one day a week. So I said, man, I’ll just like see if he wants to go to lunch. I just wanted to talk to him-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:30:04]
Jordan Netzel:
At least one day a week. So I said, “Man, I’ll just see if he wants to go to lunch. I just want to go talk to him about this and see what he thinks about other social media or whatever and see what he’s up to.” He’s a much bigger deal than what I originally thought because we get through this whole conversation and I’m just asking, “Yeah I know, TikTok.” He’s like, “Yeah, 2.5 million followers at the time, whatever, and it’s all good. I just like to do this, it’s fun.” But he got picked up early on. When he first started making them, he said in the first couple weeks he had 300,000 followers.
Jordan Netzel:
And the biggest thing there, I guess the takeaway is if there’s a new platform or something that you’re thinking about using the earlier you start, the better. So of course you can’t go back in time and start in February of 2019, so today is going to be better than a month from now or today is going to be better than three months from now. Today is the best time to start. Or I guess what do they say? Yesterday is the best time to start, today’s the second best or something like that.
Jordan Netzel:
But he was really early to the platform and early adopters of this stuff can just kind of go crazy. So anyway, he got picked up by TikTok to be one of their ambassadors for the year 2019. So they paid for him to travel around the country, going to different conventions for, I don’t even know, tech conventions or social media conventions and all this stuff to basically represent TikTok. And so that was a big part of it too, that he had this blue check next to his name that said, “TikTok ambassador.” And people are like, “What does that even mean? I want to follow this guy. What is that?and he’s also an orthodontist, that’s funny, and he’s dancing.” He’s got so many interesting things about him. So yeah, it made sense that he would gain a following really quick.
Jordan Netzel:
But now he’s even still with the check mark with popular creators so people know that he’s kind of a big deal on there. So anyway, we’re talking about all this stuff and basically he just tells me that… Because I didn’t think that Tiktok was monetizable at all and it’s not in the platform, so TikTok isn’t going to pay you. But it’s kind of a crazy world because TikTok… All these songs, there’s a lot of music producers who are paying creators to make videos with their sound and I have no illusion that’s going to be me ever. Like they’re going to reach out to me like, “Hey, we want you to make a video with our sound.” Because even at 65,000 followers at this point, whatever it is, 67,000, that’s small.
Jordan Netzel:
That sounds like a lot and that is a lot if it’s on YouTube or if it’s on something else. But on TikTok, that’s not that big of a deal actually. And I know that when I had 200 followers, if I would’ve have said that I would have punched myself in the face, but this is super cool and it’s a good way to get the word out that, “Hey, I’m out here.” And like I said, since it’s geographically targeted, then in the videos that I post are going more to people that are around me, which is another really interesting reason why TikTok may actually be a really cool marketing tool is because it’s targeted like that.
Jordan Netzel:
But anyway, like I said, he was a much bigger deal and he’s making money because he’s a really popular creator, so he’s just a huge deal on TikTok and he kind of gave me pointers and some tips. He said, “Yeah, if you’re trying to go viral or whatever, you need to jump on those trends really early.” And then, like I said, I think that, that’s been easier in the past. Now they’re just every day. I don’t even know. I wish I had the statistics for you, about how many people are joining the app every day or week or month. It’s crazy. So it’s getting way harder to be one of the first even 1,000 people to do one certain trend video or whatever song.
Jordan Netzel:
And so like I said, that hasn’t worked great for me just because maybe I’m too slow or I’m not on the app as often as what you have to be to really go absolutely nuts on it. But he’s doing pretty well with TikTok and he built up his business because he was a new orthodontist at the chain where he was at and he said it was kind of wasn’t really busy and the people that left right before he started, they didn’t really do a good job of marketing and all this sort of stuff, but he built up a client base really quick all, at least he credits a large part to TikTok.
Jordan Netzel:
And so he was giving me all the pointers about trying to do the viral things and I know I went way off topic. I went down a rabbit hole I think, but we’ll go back to it. How do we choose the content? I said, “I can’t dance.” I’m watching his videos, I’m like, “I can’t do what this guy does.” I’m not going to go mega viral and become famous off of this thing. I’m just going to stay in my lane and do what is working for me and what’s fun. So that’s basically just doing those songs where I kind of lip sync to it where it has maybe something I can turn it into something to do with optometry and I’m reading the eye chart or I’m talking to the doctor or asking about question to the doctor and the doctor’s responding with part of the song or something like that.
Jordan Netzel:
And those ideas just kind of have to come to you and I spend a little bit time on the app too, just scrolling through and seeing what’s trending, what’s happening, listening to the different sounds that I could possibly use and thinking, “Oh, could I use that one or could I, no that one doesn’t make any sense.” And I have a hard time finding stuff sometimes because a lot of it, I’m trying to avoid vulgar language and there’s a lot of that on there. So TikTok is really interesting. There’s a lot of this, it’s weird because there’s a lot of 15 year old girls dancing on there and there’s some drama and people coming out writing articles about the creepy old dudes watching this stuff that’s happening. It’s one of those things that for my kids, my kids are two and one right now, so it’s not a big deal for me. But I know people who have kids that are 15 and a daughter that’s 15 years old and you’re like, “Yeah, I don’t necessarily like want you to be deprived of social media completely. But this one’s kind of crazy.”
Jordan Netzel:
And I don’t know that a lot of parents even know what’s going on there and you get filtered into your thing. So if you keep liking a bunch of those dances, they’re going to keep showing you a bunch of those dances. But if you just swipe past it then it’ll stop showing you that type of video and you’ll see the funny stuff. You just make sure if you’re on there you just need to make sure to like the stuff that you actually like because then they’ll keep showing you that sort of stuff and steer you away from the other stuff that you don’t want to see.
Jordan Netzel:
Which is basically the internet in general, right? I mean it’s anything you want to. Not like adult content. I don’t want to steer anybody wrong and say there’s crazy stuff going on there. I just definitely steer clear of anything because there’s lots of songs. It’s a lot of hip hop and a lot of that stuff has language, that you just can’t use if you’re trying to market a business. And so, staying away from all those songs and still trying to find stuff that I can be creative with.
Jake Whisenant:
I was thinking about the way that it picks up, just a side note, TikTok is one of the quickest to pick up your personality. It maybe took a day, two days of me liking videos for it to understand what kind of content I wanted to see but that I think is a great marketing tool as well because not only do you have the geographic location where it’s putting it out for you, but also you’re getting people that want to see your content based on what they already like. So you don’t have to target, you don’t have to find people. It’s going to the people that like that type of video anyway.
Jordan Smith:
Very cool. Well I know it’s a new platform-ish. It’s emerging. Everybody’s trying to figure out their ways around it. Any best practices that you’ve found that work really well for you, as far as, and I know it’s going to be different for everybody, but tell us kind of what you learned as far as if there’s listeners out there that are thinking about starting it, how often should they post? What type of stuff should they think about? Any even, best practices as far as finding the music to sync up with the videos? Just kind of tell us any best practices that you’ve found either by happenstance or things that you’ve read up on for listeners out there.
Jordan Netzel:
Yeah, so a lot of that came from talking to The Bentist, which I had started to figure out some of these things on my own. And you start to think, “Man, some of these videos are going crazy.” Gary Vaynerchuk is telling you to post a hundred videos a day or a hundred pieces of content a day and that doesn’t seem to work out very well. From my experience, and he agreed with me there. We said that it seems if you post more than one video in a day, the second one just dies. It just doesn’t go anywhere. And I think that goes along with what you guys were saying about the platform not really wanting necessarily celebrities to necessarily become more popular on there and they don’t really promote their content more than the average person who might want to try to get famous on TikTok or whatever it is.
Jordan Netzel:
So maybe the person who is really famous on TikTok, they get lots of likes and of course one of these… There’s a girl on there who nobody really understands why she is as popular as she is. It’s really funny. It’s something like 20 million followers on there and literally her life has changed over the past year. That whole family, their life is completely different. I can’t even imagine how much money she’s making off of TikTok. It’s insane. But anyway, so she could post a hundred times a day and it would still get lots and lots of views on every single one of them. But for the rest of us, for us common folk, we have to spread them out a little bit more and it feels like if you take a little bit of a break and then you post a video, maybe it’ll do a little bit better because TikTok’s saying, “Oh Hey, welcome back.” And they kind of want you to get back and sort of addicted to it again. That’s my theory, right, I don’t obviously know any of that.
Jordan Netzel:
But I’ll have a little string of videos that’ll do pretty well. Like, “Oh, I had four in a row that did really well.” And then the next four just totally flop. Like I said, I cannot claim to have any secrets at all because once I feel like I’m figuring something out, it just does the opposite of what I think it’s going to do. But as far as finding music, there’s just a little search button at the bottom and you can go on there and just browse different songs or different sounds and they added a little, I don’t even know what to call it, like a carousel where you just kind of push next, next, next. It’ll just show you different sounds that you can use. Or like I said, just going through the random, for you page, and swiping through just to hear different sounds that are being used and you can use one of those or you can search for a song.
Jordan Netzel:
If you have a song that you think of, you say, “Oh I could do a song that I know from Dolly Parton or whatever.” Like there’s one that was kind of crazy. It was a trending thing from Dolly Parton’s working nine to five. So it’s not just hip hop and all new music. There’s a bunch of older stuff on there too and a huge variety of things. I know a lot of that stuff, people will upload their own sounds and so you have to be careful about using something that might be copyrighted because you know that may fly for a day and then TikTok will take it down. So I’ve seen people who had their video, they’ll post something and say, “The TikTok took down my sound and so I had a silent video going.”
Jordan Netzel:
I was like, “Well, but you can’t just upload your own music. They’re getting paid for that.” So it’s understandable that they don’t want their music uploaded without their permission. But if you go through the stuff that TikTok already has and the stuff they have you can sort by feature, you can sort by new, you can sort by trending. So obviously the stuff that they’re saying is featured or that’s trending is the stuff that they kind of want to promote at that time. So using those sounds usually seems to do a little bit better for me than just trying to jump on some random trend or picking something that I found out of nowhere. But at the same time that Fergie sound that you said that was the first one you saw, or at least the first one that you saw that you thought was, I guess something you need to follow me for. That was just, I don’t know, I didn’t see that anywhere.
Jordan Netzel:
I was just trying to think of other songs that I could use and that one just came to my head. I searched for it and it happened to be on there versus I thought of other songs before and I go search for it and it’s not on there and I don’t know enough about it to upload my own sound. I feel like I’m going to get it taken down. I’m too nervous that I’m going to get banned or whatever, get fined. I don’t know how that works, but so I’m not messing with any of that. But when I searched for it and it’s not, you’re like, “Oh, tough luck. I can’t that one obviously.”
Jake Whisenant:
Do you have people that use your audio, your original audio that you create? Because I know that if I’m watching the video, the little spinning record at the bottom, if I click that, then I can use your audio. Do you have people that usually recreate your videos, like your eye exams or anything like that?
Jordan Netzel:
I do and the biggest one was that demodex one and I told you those little mites that crawl around in your eyelashes. There were a lot of these kids that were posting videos on there where they would react to me saying what it was and that it lives in your eyelashes. They were acting like they were scared or my favorite one was actually this girl that posted it. It’s a duet. So she was just in the video basically with me. And so I’m talking and doing my video and her video is right next to mine on your screen. And she just puts up a little caption that says, “Looking around.” And she’s looking around like she’s confused or looking around for something and the caption pops up and says, “I’m trying to look around and see if I can find who asked.”
Jordan Netzel:
And I was like, “That’s hilarious.” Because yeah, I guess you didn’t ask her that creepy thing to be popped up on your page. Which, I liked it. I commented, laughing emoji or whatever. I’m trying to be cool, so I use emojis, right. But anyway, it’s funny. These kids are funny man. Some of these people are hilarious and I love seeing the creative stuff and like I said, there’s a bunch of junk on there that you don’t want to see, whatever. But if you just try to filter through yourself and like and swipe past the stuff that you do or don’t like respectively, then you’ll get onto some pretty cool stuff actually.
Jordan Smith:
Well, and like you said too, that’s any corner of the internet because everything’s now is so tailored to your interest. But I mean, I’ve loved this conversation because I think there’s a lot of people out there that are, they’re just not sure how to start something and the great thing about this platform, and the reason I wanted to have you on so badly is because this is one of the easier ones to start. Everybody’s got a smartphone. Everybody has the ability to download an app and in this platform, that’s really all you need and a couple ideas on what you want to do.
Jordan Smith:
And again, and I love what you said earlier, be engaging, be genuine, the earlier you start the better and there’s no better time than today, whether it’s a platform like Facebook or something that it seems weird, but now we consider more of a traditional type of social media. There’s no better time to just start putting stuff out there than right now. So I love those kind of tent pole ideas on if you just follow those things, you’re going to find some success because you’re just being yourself and you’re putting out a message that you know people want to hear, so.
Jordan Smith:
And success means different things. It might not be 5 million users and having a social media platform flying you around, it might just be putting out some information that people in your community will come across and hopefully those people either didn’t know you were around or you’re offering some sort of service that they’re interested in. So I think that’s the most important takeaway.
Jordan Netzel:
And I definitely, so my website, or I guess our website, the practice website is in my bio. So someone who doesn’t have any TikTok presence at all, like I said, it’s the.
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:45:04]
Jordan Netzel:
Someone who doesn’t have any TikTok presence at all. Like I said, it’s the only platform you can go on right now, post a video with zero followers … Obviously it’s harder. If you have more of a following, it’s going to happen more and you’re going to get promoted more, but it can happen if you just have zero followers or whatever. Maybe two followers if you can get some of your office staff to get on there and like your thing, so it promotes it a little bit. But whatever.
Jordan Netzel:
You don’t know how many people are going to see your website. Again, since it’s geographically targeted, it’s a big deal. Where else can you go for free right now, post something on there, and get even a hundred people who might view your page and see your website and go, “Hey, there’s an optometrist around me that did a TikTok video, that’s kind of cool. I want to go see him.”
Jordan Netzel:
I don’t have any way of tracking exactly how many people we’ve gained from TikTok. I was talking to my office manager when she was telling me about this interview that she wanted to do. I said, “Yeah, they’re going to ask how many patients have you gained from TikTok? Or the listeners are going to want to know how many patients can I gain from TikTok? And I don’t have a number.”
Jordan Netzel:
I said, “I guess it’s zero because not a single person that’s come in and told me.” My office manager says, “No way, you’re wrong about that.” She said, “You may not hear it. I think people are a little bit embarrassed to tell you that they’re watching you on TikTok or that they saw you on TikTok, but we hear the buzz around town,” she said, “and I talk to friends who have kids in high school or whatever, and they’re talking about it. They’re talking about your TikTok. That’s my eye doctor and this is my eye doctor, look at this TikTok, go follow him.” Or whatever.
Jordan Netzel:
It does create a little bit of buzz and again for free. It’s not costing me anything, doing this in my spare time. TikTok, actually, it doesn’t take that much time. It’s not like YouTube where you have to put up a really well-polished video with great audio and all this stuff. You just hit record and, and do something goofy. You’re just having fun. Or informative. There’s a lot of doctors on TikTok actually, and some of them have huge followings, and they’re talking about contraceptive methods and that’s one of these things that, like I said, all these teenagers probably need to know about and they want to know about.
Jordan Netzel:
And so that stuff is going crazy and they’re getting a huge following because they’re an OB/GYN, or they’re a whatever, just maybe a primary care doctor. And they’re just talking about this stuff and these kids like, “Whoa, that person’s cool. I want them to be my doctor.” And so, it’s a much bigger deal, at least right now. Like I said, it’s going to slow down. Like every social media, it’s going to slow down. So, start now because now is better than six months from now when it’s more like Instagram and that’s another, Gary V. Jewel, I guess, is that he talks about how Instagram’s organic reach is basically dying. In fact, if you post on Instagram right now, Instagram won’t necessarily even show it to all of your followers. Which is really interesting because I grew up basically using Instagram and you see everybody’s thing in order of when they posted it and then they’ve changed that over time and now it becomes the things that are most popular of the people you follow.
Jordan Netzel:
But I was interested to find out just recently they changed it to where you don’t even necessarily see everything from the people you follow. So, you’re an eye doctor, a dentist, whoever, medical professional listening to this and you guys are on Instagram and trying to grow that up, you should keep doing that. But just know that its organic reach and the growth ability on there is dying a little bit.
Jordan Netzel:
They’re shifting gears somewhat. Who knows if that’s going to change again because, oh now TikTok is doing this so we have to pivot and we have to try to match that and let people try to go viral because that’s apparently what people like to do these days or whatever. I don’t know that. But they have killed their organic reach a little bit by changing their algorithms somehow.
Jordan Smith:
Well, they’re owned by Facebook. So, Facebook did that years ago. That affected the way we marketed for our clients. That was a big shift for us. We knew it was coming, but it still didn’t mean that it hurt some of our clients, which is why, again, going back to some of the things you’re talking about. Right now until TikTok opens up the advertising platform part of it to every organization, right now that organic reach is super important and those are going to be the content curators that are going to still see that organic reach maintain as long as possible once TikTok opens up that ad revenue platform to everybody that’s not just giant, giant organizations. Which is again, going back to those core tenants that you talked about, be engaging, be genuine, and the earlier you start, the better.
Jordan Smith:
All of those things you get likes, you get follows. I’m going to start to see if Jake likes something on there. So, no matter what social platform you’re talking about, you’re right. Which is why being genuine and being engaging and starting now is super important so that you can build up that audience and you’re putting stuff out there that people want to engage with. It’s not just junk.
Jake Whisenant:
You also said something at the beginning of the podcast, is very pertinent, is that TikTok makes shareable content. It’s so easy to send a link to a friend or even save the video and send the video but almost everything that you see on TikTok, if you enjoy it, you want to share it. And so that is where it’s like, especially from Instagram, it’s differing as Instagram has become an influencer platform where it’s like, “Oh, I look this way because I am wearing this makeup or I took this vitamin.” Or whatever it may be.
Jake Whisenant:
And TikTok is this organic creators that is purely to be shared. They want to go viral, they want people to share it.
Jordan Netzel:
Yeah. And that’s obviously helped them grow because TikTok has grown so fast. It’s been a little over a year. A year and a few months, I guess, that they’ve even been in existence and it’s incredibly huge because, I watch videos about this, this isn’t my idea or my analytics or whatever. But they make it shareable because when someone can post it on Facebook, then other people are like, “Oh, they’re sharing a video.” And it’s got a stamp. What do they call that? A watermark or something where it says “TikTok”. And so people know that it’s from something called TikTok. They say, “That was hilarious. I want to see more of this stuff on this TikTok that this is coming from.” And they’ll go download the app.
Jordan Netzel:
And so it was just a smart move for them business-wise to make it so shareable that there’s a direct link, and they want the creators to be able to link to their Instagram or their YouTube channel. They have direct links for that, which is very unique. Because on something like Facebook, if you are trying to grow something a post organically and put all the right search engine optimization in there, whatever you want to do, if you put a link away from Facebook in that post, it’s going to … I don’t want to say kill it, but they’re going to down regulate it basically. Because they don’t want people linking away from Facebook. They want people to stay on Facebook as long as possible. So, TikTok will change over time. It’ll change the way that it’s being used.
Jordan Netzel:
But for right now, they want people to share it like crazy and it’s working. They are sharing it like crazy.
Jordan Smith:
Well, Doc, I appreciate this time so much. I know all the listeners out there do also. For anybody out there that wants more information or maybe would want to contact you, or even the practice, where can they find out more information?
Jordan Netzel:
Yeah, I think all of our contact information is on our website. And of course I don’t have it memorize. It’s Robertsville.eye.com I’m pretty sure. But hey, it’s on the TikTok. You’ve got to go get on TikTok and then you’ll see the link to the website.
Jordan Smith:
I love that. TikTokEyeDoc is the best way to get a hold of him.
Jake Whisenant:
YouTube page, but they put up … I went through your YouTube page, all of you are creating some really cool content about five things you should now, the contact lens video, because I’m terrible at putting in my own contact lenses.
Jordan Netzel:
So, that’s another topic altogether is YouTube. Like I said, I did the goofy lawn care YouTube channel and that’s going well, but it’s been a different game for the optometry thing. So, I was going to … There’s a guy on YouTube who’s killing it as far as … And like I said, marketing, but YouTube you also get ad revenue from Google AdSense and so that’s really cool. But his YouTube channel is called Dr. Eye Health and he’s just doing awesome things over there. He’s a young guy, who obviously gets social media and his videos are good quality. The sound’s good quality. And so my a YouTube channel, I still hope to build that up and I want to make more stuff for that for sure here coming up pretty soon, and I’m striving to be more like Dr. Eye Health.
Jordan Netzel:
I don’t actually even know his … He probably says his name on there every episode, but I just don’t remember what it is. But yeah, so that’s somebody to pay attention to too. Just as far as social media is concerned. If you’re thinking about YouTube, you can go see what he’s doing. There are a couple of physical therapists on YouTube that are doing … I mean just going crazy. I think physical therapy lends itself more to … They’re basically giving away free information, which is just something kind of cool. I guess I’ll step back for a second.
Jordan Netzel:
My father-in-law, he’s been a stock broker. He’s been in stockbroker training for a long, long time. They came and visited over Christmas and he’s talking about retiring at some point semi-soon. And I guess, throughout his life he’s done training seminars and these things where he’ll get paid lots of money to go talk to a room of college students about investing in different things like finance.
Jordan Netzel:
So, he’s got a lot of these ideas and a lot of these concepts that he’s come up with. And he told me, he’s like, “I kind of just don’t want it to die with me. I want to put it out there somewhere where people can learn from it.” And I think his original intention, he was thinking sell it. He used to have a whole deck of cassette tapes and he would sell these cassette tapes as a training program. And so I think that his original intent, he’s thinking, “How can I sell this? I’ll retire. And then I’ll try to sell some of this stuff on the internet.”
Jordan Netzel:
Not really knowing exactly how social media is trending right now. But basically the game on social media is to give away as much information as you possibly can to get a following. And then you keep maybe a piece of that to sell. Of course, in our case as, I guess, eye care providers or medical professionals in general, you give away a bunch of information so that when people have one of those problems and they want to come see somebody, like, “Oh, I remember that guy from …” You have a following built up and they know who you are because you are offering them something out on the internet.
Jordan Netzel:
And so these physical therapists are giving away basically physical therapy on the internet. They’re saying, “If you have this type of pain, this is how you diagnose yourself and this is the stretch that you should do.” But that was a totally foreign concept to him. He was like, “Wait, really? These people are just given all of this away for free.” And I was like, “Yeah.” And I have to imagine that a lot of the other physical therapists out there, because optometry, you can’t really give it away for free. You can’t do a refraction on YouTube and prescribe somebody glasses.
Jordan Netzel:
So, I’m not mad that Dr. Eye Health has a great following on YouTube. But physical therapy, you can kind of give it away on YouTube. And so I have to imagine there are other physical therapists who get a little bit mad at that. And I think that those two physical therapists that are just killing it, they’re kind of wiping the tears away with the dollar bills when they get all these views.
Jordan Smith:
Well, yeah. And even the stuff that you’re producing, the video that you talked about with the mites and that type of thing. That’s still free valuable content. But you’re exactly right, it’s how much information can you give away for free? And valuable information.
Jordan Netzel:
Right, right, right. Add value. You’re adding value to an audience and then they’re going to want to follow you and it’ll come back around. It feels weird that, especially when you, like I said, that was his world, was how do I sell this information? And it’s shifted without him paying that much attention to social media that everyone’s giving it away for free so you better jump on board or else …. No one’s going to buy your stuff that they can get on the internet for free.
Jordan Smith:
True. But adding value. Just adds value. More value than you think you’ll get from the interaction and typically it’s going to come back to you.
Jordan Netzel:
Yep.
Jordan Smith:
Well speaking about value, I know that this has been super interesting for Jake and I and I know that it’s added value out there to a lot of our listeners, so I genuinely want to say thank you for spending the time and adding the value that you have. I’m looking forward to following your success and I wanted to talk to you now so that whenever you have 2 million followers, you’ll take my phone call again.
Jordan Netzel:
I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.
Jordan Smith:
Well, Dr. Netzel, we appreciate all those links. TikTokEyeDoc. Go check him out. We’ll include all those links to their website and to his TikTok account in the show notes. Doc, any closing thoughts or anything else you want to make sure you leave the listeners with?
Jordan Netzel:
No, I was just going to tell you that I’ve had a lot of fun doing this. This was fun and I think that’s an important point for anything, including if you’re making tic talk or any Instagram, Facebook, whatever social media stuff you’re doing, is have fun with it and it’s going to, like you said, come across so much more genuine.
Jordan Netzel:
And I don’t know, I originally started wondering if people were going to think I was unprofessional but pretty quick just decided I didn’t really care.
Jordan Smith:
Well, we love it.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah, I know you’ve got a lot of fans out there and I’m looking forward to following your success no matter what.
Jordan Netzel:
Awesome. Thanks so much guys.
Jordan Smith:
We appreciate it.
Jake Whisenant:
Thank you, sir.
Jordan Smith:
All right. Well everybody, I hope that you found that as captivating as we did. Even those that are in the industry. Jordan’s got a lot of knowledge on this type of stuff, so I was very excited to bring Dr. Netzel to you. Jake, any kind of closing thoughts?
Jake Whisenant:
I really just want to reiterate things that he said about being engaging, being genuine, and getting on it, starting yesterday. Don’t wait around. There’s no reason to wait around, especially on this app where, like Jordan said, we all have a smartphone. We all have a camera capability. It’s free. It is a place to create content, be creative. But like I said, if you’re not genuine on it, it’s not going to be engaging for others.
Jordan Netzel:
Well everyone like, comment, subscribe. If you like this type of content or want to hear more about very specific things that very specific doctors, just like you guys, are trying and doing and either succeeding with or having challenges with, let us know.
Jordan Netzel:
We produce this podcast for you. So, if there’s anybody that you want to hear from, any topics that you want to hear about, please feel free to let us know. We’ll include all of Dr. Netzel’s contact information, all the show links, and hope to talk to you guys soon. Thanks everybody.
Jake Whisenant:
Thank you, guys.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [00:59:25]
