TCC Podcast #321: How to Grow on TikTok, Build a Personal Brand, and Navigate Change with Mariam Vossough

Mariam Vossough is our guest on the 321st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Mariam is a copywriter and scriptwriter who is breaking into TikTok as a means to connect with her ideal client: Gen X women. The insights she shares will not only help you become a better writer but just might give you the courage to give TikTok a shot. Here’s what we talk about: Mariam’s start in the cutting room and how she became in charge of the entire story office. Her transition to children’s author after becoming a mother. Are children’s book writers cooler than copywriters? Self-publishing vs. finding an agent – which route should you take? Why copywriting is the best career for never-ending learners. How she stumbled across copywriting and why she joined The Copywriter Accelerator. What’s the process for turning a mediocre story into great content? How copy structure is an art form and why it can change the entire dynamic of the reader’s experience. Why your ego has no place in the editing room. How Mariam tears apart copy and creates a better end product. The day-to-day of being on a writing team and writing stories for episodes. How her scriptwriting career made her fearless and develop a thick skin. How to create better open loops and cliffhangers. When she knew she was ready to transition her career. What her business looks like today and why it took her longer to niche down. How she discovered her niche and what helped her get there. Why marketers need to pay more attention to gen X women and why they’re being ignored in the first place. Showing up on TikTok – what works and who should use it? 5 steps to getting started on TikTok TODAY. How she breaks down her content pillars on social media. Creating content on TikTok without dancing. Play this episode for immediate inspiration. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Join The Accelerator Waitlist The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Connect with Mariam on TikTok and Linkedin  Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Jenn Prochaska's episode  Episode 75 Episode 177 Episode 276 Jenn's TikTok Full Transcript: Kira Hug:  Niching down, owning your personal brand and showing up as your wild self on social media often feels like a huge obstacle for copywriters like us. But as business owners, it's kind of unavoidable, especially early on in our business when we don't have a team. The good news is we control how we niche, how we brand ourselves, and how we show up in the world. And our guest on this week's podcast is the perfect example of a writer who's not only taken control over her brand identity, but who has also built a business that provides meaning to her. And she's done it in her own way with a brilliant sense of humor and grace. Mariam Vossough is a copywriter, screenwriter, and TikTok nerd. And after this episode, you just might rethink how you show up on social media and you just might find yourself creating a TikTok account. I know she's almost convinced me, like not quite, but almost, so close. And before we jump into the interview, I want to introduce my lovely co-host this week who is feeling a little under the weather, and I appreciate her being here. So welcome back to the show, Jenn Prochaska, who is a brand messaging strategist, writer, also a guest on episode 307, which is one of my favorite episodes where we talked about overcoming addiction, scaling a business, parenthood. We went deep and Jenn was so transparent and real throughout the entire conversation. If you haven't listened to it, you've got to listen to it. So Jenn, thanks for coming back, especially when you're not feeling so great. Jenn Prochaska:  Yeah, thanks Kira. Yeah, I'm keeping it real. I'm a little congested, but I'm super excited to talk about Mariam... Podcast. Kira Hug:  All right, great. And so before we jump in, this episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Accelerator. We are really excited because we are about to launch this program. We're about to jump in with a bunch of copywriters and get started. So we're currently offering early bird access to this business building program where we get to work with you over five months to put all the pieces of your business together. So you can go from feeling like an order taker to really feeling more like a CEO and in control of your business. And if you have any interest in joining or just checking it out, you can join early and save some cash, which is always nice. And you can check out more information in the show notes. You will hear a good amount about it today because our podcast guest is an Accelerator alumni member. So you'll hear a little bit more about it. All right, let's jump into the interview with Mariam. Mariam Vossough:  I'll try to do the potted history 'cause I'm very, very old, so there's quite a lot. I always wanted to work in drama. I studied drama at university. I started off working in the film industry. I did various different roles on set to kind of learn the different trades. And I ended up landing in the cutting room. So I was really fascinated with the story and how a good editor can really transform quite mediocre material. So I spent hours and hours and hours sitting in cutting rooms and I started when we were on film, that's how old I am. I was literally carrying canisters of film rolls towards the end of my time in the cutting room. It started to move over to digital, but it was an amazing place to learn about storytelling. I increasingly became frustrated because I wanted more input and to make a bigger difference on the story, which is why I went to the other end of the process. And I wanted to start writing. So I got various jobs, script writing, script reading for other people. And I landed a big job on a program called Coronation Street, which is, I think it's the world's longest running drama serial. So I started there as a story liner. I worked my way up to story editor. So I was in charge of the whole story office. We would write all the stories for every single episode that went out. I did that for about a year and then I got promoted onto the writing team, which was a huge deal. So I was still quite young and I stayed on the writing team for a couple of years. Then I had a baby. So I just took some time off. And I decided when I went back to... Go for a different show, because I've been on Coronation Street at that point, about five years, and that's not five normal years, it's like five dog years. It's so intense. And I just wanted to do something else. So I worked on a Channel Four program called Hollyoakes, which is a kind of soap drama serial for a younger audience. And there was lots of comedy in it and they dealt with some serious issues as well. I liked being able to combine the two. So I wrote there for a couple of sessions. I did it for a few years, then I had my second son. Then I went back for a few years and then I found myself with two young children trying to write for a TV program full time and something had to give. And when you write for that kind of show, you are expected to be available 24/7 if they need rewrites or someone goes off sick, you've just got to be there. They need it in and they need it in for the next day. And I couldn't make myself that available. Well, I didn't want to. So I became an author. I wrote for children. Now obviously, I had two young children at the time and I never thought I'd write for children. But what spurred me on is that I had two boys and the lack of imaginative books for young boys at that time, I was quite disappointed. Unless you wanted to read about firemen or tractors, there wasn't much. And I was sure you could do better than that. So I wrote a series of books that aimed at boys under a pseudonym and that was great fun. And opened me up to the world of children's book authors who are the loveliest set of writers you will find. Copywriters are second, but children's book writers are just the most welcoming. They are so lovely. And I enriched my life in so many ways. So I did that. I carried on doing that for a few years. And then unfortunately my eldest son became very, very ill. And I had to completely step back from work for a couple of years. We were trying to find our feet, me and him. I was trying to get him the help he needed and just adapt our whole way of life to his illness. And after a year or so, my brain is the kind of brain that just won't stop. And unless I use my brain positively, it starts to go down a dark path because it keeps going whatever I'm doing with it. And at that time, I'd heard more and more about self-publishing. Now it wasn't familiar to me because I came up through the very traditional writing part. You had to find an agent and then the agent got your work. So I started to look on YouTube and found tutorials and things and I thought just out of interest to see if this is possible and to keep my brain ticking over, I'm going to self-publish a couple of books. So I wrote a couple of fiction books, which I'd never done before. I never liked to make my life easy. So I wrote a couple of fiction books and published them on Kindle under a pseudonym and made them into an audio book. And I really enjoyed the process, but I thought, this is not something I want to do. I don't want to be a publisher full time. It takes me away from the work I enjoy, but I'm still earning money back from that. That's a regular sort of income. And whilst I was on YouTube, I then started to see things on my feed about making a living writing online. And I was completely clueless. I didn't know what this could possibly be. So I started to watch videos and found out about writing blogs and writing online content.