Welcome to the Dietitian Boss Podcast. I'm Libby Rothschild, creator of Dietitian Boss. After almost four years of sitting in my dimly lit, windowless clinical office, I had enough. I wanted to feel like my work mattered. So I did something about it.
I created a program that empowers dietitians and nutritionists to create their own private practice from scratch, following my proprietary system. Before I did this, I had a private practice of my own while working a full time job and I learned a lot about building relationships, marketing and sales.
And I'm so excited to be able to share my proprietary framework with you TikTok and marketing for dietitians. This is a popular topic because a lot of you are looking to get clients, how do you get people to know that you exist and how do you do so in a way that fits with your schedule and helps you sell something.
Some of you want to sell coaching, others of you want to sell an online course or membership program or maybe an e-book and you're wondering what are the popular ways where people are searching for information? Maybe it's about food freedom or maybe it's about Diabetes or Chronic Disease Management, maybe it's about weight loss and you're wondering how can you be the person that they find when they're looking at dietitians, when they're looking at nutritional solutions. And so I want to briefly talk today about TikTok and some of the trends that you can use so that you can be seen and heard faster, which can really help you when you're looking to stand out.
So there are easy ways that you can use TikTok with trends. And first I want to talk about how you can make a great TikTok and then I want to talk about trends. So there's a list I want to share with you today, a list of nine things. First firstly is identifying your niche.
Now I don't want that to hold you back if you don't yet know that you want to, let's say, support chronic disease, like IBS. That's okay showing up and talking about nutrition in general or talking about something related to gut health around the area of IBS, for example, is a great start.
Remember we can't improve if we don't get started but start thinking about who you're serving and how you can help them. Also known as you are a niche, determining the type of content that you want to make and the audience that you want to reach is an important part of improving your content strategy. And I have yet to meet a dietitian that's come to work with me, that's super specific.
Usually you're not as specific as you need to be in order for your marketing to be effective. So, if you're not reaching your goals and making the money that you want and the impact that you desire, there might be an opportunity for you to focus your message a little bit more. So when you're looking to attract your audience, you could be doing something like talking, you can be dancing but you don't have to and you can also, although I would rather have, you share your face, you can do tutorials that show words and you don't necessarily have to put you on the TikTok.
Now, when it comes to TikTok, you want to plan your content and this is the part a lot of you struggle with is how do you make TikTok faster because you don't want this to consume your life. So before filming, I want you to think about the concept or the theme. Think about the message.
For example, if you're talking about lowering A1C and the theme is identifying your plate for breakfast, writing your specific meal, you might want to think about that before you discuss it. And it doesn't have to be, you know, an elaborate TikTok that uses props like showing your breakfast meal, you could just have a simple list where you're giving two tips about breakfast meal ideas that will support lowering A1C. So that's an example of how you plan your content.
I like to tell our clients to write down a few ideas and then find one time that you're scheduling to actually record those ideas and that's what we do here at Dietitian Boss as well. Using good lighting and sound is important. Using sound is definitely important. You don't have to use trends, although I'll talk about that in a minute. That sound can be you sharing a tip or a trick and good lighting is gonna make you feel confident.
So you want to make sure when you're filming that the light is behind you. Sorry, the light is in front of you, not behind you. So what I like to do is just kind of put my phone in front of my face in selfie mode and do a little turn and find out what is gonna be the best background so that I don't look too shadowy because I want people to be able to see me that's not always perfect.
Sometimes the shadows are still there, but you want to try to do the best you can, there's other factors, time of day etcetera, but you just want to aim towards thinking about the lighting being decent and that makes it more enjoyable for people to listen and watch. And then using the right music is something I'm gonna talk a little bit more about in a moment but you know, music is a big part of TikTok. So you want to choose a song that you know, fits your video and it complements what the video is doing, but you don't have to do that if you want to. Well, I mean you do have to do that, but there's a few ways you can do that. So I'm a huge fan of you just sharing information about nutrition.
So if you want to show your face and give three tips about foods that lower A1C or or two tips in order to create a plate that will help you maintain or lower A1C levels for a diabetic. That's an easy way for you to create content. You can take that same theme and turn it into a list and then you can use slideshows in your TikTok to share what that list represents to help somebody with lowering A1C and knowing what to do as a diabetic for example.
So sound is a part of the process, whether it's your own original sound or whether you're using sound from a trend that you find and then finding a creative way to incorporate it in your video, you want to use effects and filters. TikTok has a wide range of effects and filters that you can use to enhance your video and you can experiment with the effects that work best for your content.
But I want you to be cautious on this. It's a little more advanced to use effects and filters because it can take extra time and a little bit of a learning curve. So my suggestion is to keep your TikTok simple. The easiest way to create a TikTok would be to share 1 to 2 tips about a theme that your target market struggles with.
For example, if they struggle with guilt and they want to find food freedom, there's a lot of information that you could talk about and related to different times of the day, breakfast, lunch dinner themes, holidays, things that are unique to your target market and you don't have to go fancy with filters and effects and trends, but you can, but if you're just starting, you want to keep it simple, otherwise you're not going to be consistent, being creative is important too, and you don't be afraid to try new things and take risks because like that's what can help you break through where you're, where you're at right now, the more unique and creative their videos are, it's fun for other people, but also this can take some time for some of you that might feel a little uncomfortable.
So take small risks. Like for me that might be in a video I've done before on TikTok having a lab coat and then snapping my fingers on a lab coat disappears onto the floor. Now, that was a really fun trick that I did to talk, talk about no more clinical not needing clinical experience to become a dietician in private practice or Dietitian Boss.
And that was a really fun way for me to represent a theme and a fun idea for dietitians and that did help me stand out. Not every video uses effects and those fun ways where I'm snapping my fingers and doing fun things, but it is an opportunity you also want to engage with your audience. This is the seventh tip and responding back to comments and participating in conversations and using hashtags to connect with other people is something that I don't see enough dieticians doing.
So for example, let's go back to food freedom. If that's your area and you're using similar hashtags on TikTok that have to do with food freedom, you can start engaging in similar conversations and building relationships, observing what people are saying and engaging in meaningful relationships.
Not every time that you engage in a conversation, will that turn out to be something meaningful? But that's the investigation is just starting to flex your communication muscles on the internet to find what conversations are going to lead to something more valuable. Then you want to be consistent, consistency is key on TikTok.
So you want to find a regular schedule and then follow it. And that might mean you're posting less TikTok less regularly at first, but you definitely want to find something that's consistent. Posting multiple times a week of TikTok is great and it's easier if you can batch record content. It's also easier if you're not looking if you're not looking at making complicating TikTok’s, that's why I say start simple and build up with time now in my program, I offer checklist, I offer a content 101 checklist, 201 and 301 and our progressive based on you taking off a few boxes at a time so that you're building your skills with time because it's not sustainable for us to be putting out content with a bunch of trends and running a program and managing admin or delegating tasks to a virtual system is, that's a lot of stuff at once.
So you want to try to keep things manageable and simple. And one of the most overlooked ways to do that is to show your face because building rapport with people by showing them who you are is gonna go a lot longer than you thinking that trends are the only way that you can get people's attention. The last tip on here would be to make sure that you respect the copyright and give credit if you need to for an original creator. I know that's a big topic on the internet in terms of ownership and people getting upset about copyright.
It's a really great area and it's also a newer area of concern. So when in doubt giving credit to somebody else is always a good practice. Now, let me give a couple quick tips about trends. If you do want to do trends because those are popular on TikTok. Again, if you're feeling overwhelmed to keep it simple and if you're like, give me more, Libby. I want to know what I can do to ramp it up, then hey, I'm gonna give you a couple of tips and tricks at this time.
So trends are, you know, that means popular themes, sounds and hashtags that users on the TikTok App they're currently using and engaging with right there creating content around themes and sounds. So if you're seeing something similar, very often a dance move or very often trending music, that's an indication that using that piece of content or incorporating that with what you do can help you participate in the trend and that can help you get viral no promises.
But if you get in front of more people that can help you be seen and heard, but again, it has to be the right people. So it's not the number, you know, the solution to business isn't going viral. The solution of businesses, building relationships and solving problems and being consistent and trends are just one opportunity that might help you get in front of more people.
Okay, so that means comedy skits, lip syncing videos and more. Now if you want to do this to find TikTok trends, you can scroll through the for you page on the app of TikTok, which will show you popular videos and content from users you follow. Um, and that are recommended to you, it's typically based on your viewing history.
So the more that you use the app, the better the algorithm is gonna feed you suggestions based on your behaviors. Secondly, you want to search for popular hashtags on the app and the more popular, the most popular hashtags are going to be found on the discover page and then you can go to the trending section.
You want to look for videos that have a large number of views and likes and comments, right? Because those are going to be the ones that are trending more. They're more likely to be a part of a trend than videos that aren't getting a lot of traction. You want to follow popular TikTok creators and influencers because if they participate and create popular trends, then you'll be more likely to see them first because you were following them, right? So that can help you get ahead and then finally, you want to check out TikTok’s trending page on the app where you can find the most popular trends in real time.
I hope this was helpful. I want to remind you that we have free guides on our website that walk you through checklists of what you can do in order combined with TikTok to use social media and online marketing to be seen and heard and get in front of people so that they can start purchasing your products and services.
So make sure to head over to Dietitian Boss.com. We've got free guides listen on our home page and on a drop down tab that will help you have your own checklist to work through what I'm talking about today so that you can work on becoming a full time private practitioner if you're looking for support to start grow and scale your dietitian private practice, I want to invite you to work with me and my team.
We have a few different options. Head over to DietitianBoss.com and apply to have a conversation with somebody from our sales team to discuss your options for your budget and stage of business, head over to DietitianBoss.com and we look forward to connecting.
