TCC Podcast #332: Going Viral on Tik Tok and Other Copywriting Adventures with Chloe Barnes

Chloe Barnes is our guest on the 332nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Chloe is a copywriter and creator coach who made her freelance gig a full-time income. After going viral on a little platform known as TikTok, Chloe has been able to grow her business by building her personal brand. But what makes good content and how can you use the platform to your advantage? Tune into the episode to find out… You’ll also hear: Why she ended up studying abroad in Sweden and how it changed the projection of her career. Starting a travel blog and getting a full-time content marketing job out of it. How she maintained working a 9-5 and a 5-9. Why she ended up on TikTok in the first place. How she blew up on TikTok on two different occasions and booked out her calendar. Why you need to be okay with the long game and how to be consistent. How she builds her personal brand on TikTok rather than her copywriting expertise. Her process for posting on TikTok and her content marketing strategy. How do you come down from a viral moment? What about haters and trolls? What do you do about them? Balancing the many ideas that come from quick growth and success. Dealing with wrong-fit clients and how to navigate sticky situations. How to develop your own style on social media. Why you don’t have to pay to get started and how it’s holding you back. Press play or read the transcript below. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Chloe's TikTok The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  How long does it take to become an overnight sensation? How much work do you need to put in until something goes viral or your audience starts to find you? And what happens when you finally break through and people want to hear from you? Our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast knows the answers to those questions. Copywriter and TikTok sensation, Chloe Barnes, is here to answer those questions and more. We talked about going viral on social media, dealing with haters and trolls, her not exactly strategic approach to creating content and a lot more. So stay tuned because we think you're going to like this episode. But before we get to that interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think Tank, that's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their businesses. Whether that's getting onto a stage, creating a new product, growing the business that you already have, creating a video channel, building an agency, anything like that. Maybe you want to just become the best known copywriter in your niche. That's the kind of thing that we help copywriters do in the Think Tank. To learn more, visit copywriterthinktank.com and fill out that short application. And I also need to introduce you to my guest host for this episode, copywriter and business strategist, Jill Wise. Jill has been a previous guest on the podcast, that was episode 235. She's also a former Think Tank member. She's an amazing copywriter. Welcome to the show, Jill. Jill Wise:  Thank you so much for having me. Like I said before we started recording, I was really excited to just hang out with you this morning. Rob Marsh:  Yeah, well I mean, when you're talking about all the amazing things... Before we started recording the show, telling me all the things going on in your business, I'm like, I wish we had more time now. Jill Wise:  I mean, maybe I'll just come back for another episode. Rob Marsh:  Yeah, let's do that. Jill Wise:  I'm pitching myself live. Rob Marsh:  We should definitely do that. I mean, since the last time we recorded you've had a baby, your business is still growing and doing amazing. So yeah, you have a lot, I think to add, not just to this conversation, but maybe a future episode. Jill Wise:  I'm very excited to talk about this though, because right after you sent this over, I obviously went and found her TikTok and her Instagram, and I found the viral videos, and I was starting to reverse engineer everything. I'm really excited to get into it. Rob Marsh:  Awesome. Cool. Well, first let's kick off our interview with Chloe Barnes with Kira asking her how she got started as a copywriter. Chloe Barnes:  I actually started in digital marketing for a university back when I was working in Australia, and I was promoting the student exchange program for the division of business. I did a student exchange when I was in uni, and it was amazing, and that was my first introduction into the world of marketing, something that you really believe in. It just opened up this whole new career path for me, because I originally got my degree in IT and started out as an advisor for a big four company, and really hated it. So once I started in marketing, I moved to the UK and got a job in an SEO agency, and realized that there was this whole other world that I just did not even know existed. From there on, I just went into various corporate jobs and found myself moving further and further away from copywriting, which is what I seem to always enter as. And people kept telling me I was really good at it, and I loved it. I was freelancing on the side and I thought, "You know what? I need to just go and do this for myself," because it was by far my favorite part of the job. But the more that you work in corporate, the less you get to do. They keep trying to move you into more marketing roles with campaigns and things, and copywriting is such a small part of the job. And I thought, "No. No, I need to go and do this because this is what I want to be doing." So yeah, two years ago, I probably just decided to take the leap and start taking on clients for myself, and just snowballed from there. Rob Marsh:  Okay. I want to know, where did you do your studies abroad? Chloe Barnes:  I went to Sweden. Yeah, I had a couple of glasses of wine one afternoon and decided to apply for a scholarship, and I applied for two schools in America, in the United States. One was just a throwaway. I was like, "I don't know where, I'll just spin the map and see what happens." And Sweden was the third option that I chose. Rob Marsh:  Do you speak Swedish? Chloe Barnes:  No. Rob Marsh:  Tell us about it. Yeah, share a little bit about that experience. I know this isn't really what I'm talking to you about, but I'm curious. Sweden is number one or two on my travel list right now. Chloe Barnes:  Amazing. It's such a beautiful country and I'm so glad I went there instead of the US, because it's just, I would never have thought to go there and it ended up being one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had. It was my first time seeing snow. As an Australian we don't get a lot of it, but I landed in the middle of winter and got a friend... They partner you with a buddy, and it was the first time I'd been overseas, first time being outside of Australia. I was 22, on my own, and it just totally blew my mind. I did the dog sleds, I went on a snowmobile, went to the ice hotel, got to travel on a cruise to Estonia, and just, best thing ever. Rob Marsh:  Yeah, sounds amazing. My father speaks Swedish and one of my best friends speaks Swedish, and have both lived in Sweden for a while. But yeah. Yeah, like I said, it's on my list. Chloe Barnes:  Yeah, you do have to go. It's a beautiful, beautiful country and it's just... I've actually ended up marrying a Fin, so in that family of countries. Rob Marsh:  Okay. Let me turn this into maybe just a broader question and then we can get back to some of the marketing and copywriting stuff. But just from your experience, how has travel impacted your work and the things that you do, as far as just opening up those kinds of vistas and opportunities? Chloe Barnes:  Oh, look, travel is probably responsible for the reason why I'm a writer now, to be completely honest. Because when I found out I was going to Sweden, I was like, "Well, of course I'm going to need to start a travel blog because I'm going to be that person." This was back in the BlogSpot and very, very early WordPress days. So yeah, I started a travel blog and that was what helped me get the job at the SEO agency. And having that travel blog... It was actually through some travel blog of friends that I got introduced to freelance copywriting and actually got a job at a content mill, churning out just blog post upon blog post for these clients. So without travel, without having that connection to writing about my experiences while I was traveling, I probably wouldn't be where I am today. Kira Hug:  I'm interested in the transition from working at these corporate jobs and then, you said you wanted to go in, do this for myself. When you decide, okay, I'm going to go full-time, what are some of the steps, the specific steps that you took to make that transition? Chloe Barnes: It took me much longer than I probably would've liked to actually make the leap into doing this for myself full-time. But I think the key for me was, because I have a family, I have kids, I've got a house, I've got a husband, all that, I needed to do it in a way that made sense for my family. So I worked at my full-time job and freelanced on the side initially, until I could start to see results from my content marketing. Once I started seeing organic generation happening through those channels, I thought, "Okay, I'm comfortable enough now to be able to take a step back from my full-time job and actually go into doing this." It was less of a leap of faith and like, "I'm going to make this work." And more of like, "I've built up a comfortable nest, I've got this working for me, so now I can take the steps to actually leave." But it was a really easy transition. The place that I was working at was very, very supportive.