Small Business Spotlight: Corpse Flower Studio 🌱

Meet Sue, owner of Corpse Flower Studio in Seattle, Washington. A software engineer by day, Sue devotes her spare time to her side business and true passion: growing and propagating rare exotic plants, which she sells in her online store.

Sue started her TikTok journey by making short videos introducing exotic plants in her greenhouse. One video went viral before she had any followers, and now her account has attracted over 58,000 fans. Sue's TikTok Business Account has been the main source of traffic and customers to her Etsy shop.

Here are some of Sue's top tips to create compelling content and promote your business on TikTok.

🌱 Grow your fan base by interacting with your customers.

Since she started posting videos, Sue has received hundreds of customers to her Etsy shop directly through TikTok. By regularly posting videos about plants in her shop and her studio, she gained more and more followers over time. She often responds to questions in the comment section as the starting point for new videos, as a simple way of creating new content and interacting with her audience. This strategy has gradually helped to turn her followers into loyal customers, and has been vital to her success.

🌱 Let customers be your word-of-mouth advocates.

Sue's customers speak highly of her shop and plants online. By taking care to give each customer the best possible experience, Sue became known through positive reviews of plants purchased through her online store. Her customers also post unboxing videos on TikTok and other platforms, showing the level of care taken in packaging the exotic plants. Satisfied customers have become a great source of marketing for Sue's business.

🌱 Speak from the heart, and the rest will happen organically

"I love how success on TikTok is so democratic," says Sue. "As long as you make some content that people find compelling, you can go viral." What she means is that on TikTok, you're not limited by your follower count. When Sue's first video went viral, she had no followers at all. Her best advice is to speak from the heart and share what inspires you; the rest will take care of itself. For those starting out, she says, "Don't worry about statistics, the number of followers, or the best time to post your TikTok videos—all of this will happen organically."

🌱 See what performs best and adjust

With the analytics available through her TikTok Business Account, Sue was able to see what worked best and adjust her content accordingly. Sometimes she came up with new ideas based on the data from her account dashboards. The analytic tools and features provide an efficient and low-cost way to understand your followers so that you can better engage them.

🌱 Play around with in-app editing features

With no prior experience in video editing, Sue didn't know what to expect when making a TikTok video. By experimenting with the app, she discovered many useful tools and filters that made the process easy, which in turn allowed her to create highly successful videos.

Sue says that it usually takes her 30 minutes to create a high-quality TikTok video from scratch, such as showcasing her studio or introducing a new kind of plant in her shop. Videos responding to questions from followers are even faster to create, and allow her to interact directly with her audience on the topics they're most interested in.

🌱 Share what inspires you

It's always easier to create content about things you're passionate about. For a plant lover like Sue, it's easy to consistently make videos about the passion for plants that she shares with her TikTok community. When coming up with content ideas for your small business, speak from the heart and tell your audience what inspires you.

• Follow Sue on TikTok: @corpseflowerstudio