Adam Holt on Building a 500,000-Follower TikTok as a Board-Certified Entomologist

00:01 Dan Leibrandt

Hey there and welcome to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host Dan Leibrandt and today I'm with Adam Holt. If you don't already know Adam, he is the founder of Name.Dat.Bug, which is an expert consulting company for pest control, helping out with things like licensing, social media, software and more. He's also been in the pest control industry for over 25 years now and has had high level roles at some of the biggest pest control companies like Terminix. He's also a board certified entomologist and maybe most impressive of all, Adam has over 500,000 followers on his pest control TikTok, as well as over 12 million likes. So, you know, he's a huge deal in the pest control space. And I've really seen basically no one crack the code on TikTok like he has. So in this episode, we're particularly going to jump into his top strategies for TikTok and how you can leverage them to grow your business. So without further ado, thanks for coming on the show, Adam.

00:50 Adam Holt

Thank you so much, Dan, for having me. It's always a pleasure and I just love doing this and I love being able to give back to other people. So I'm coming to you live from Ewa Beach, Hawaii. So aloha, everybody.

01:01 Dan Leibrandt

Aloha to you as well. So let's jump into the beginning of kind of your TikTok journey. When did you start growing on TikTok?

01:09 Adam Holt

Great question, great question. Started TikTok during COVID. I'd never even heard of TikTok and we were sitting there of course during COVID with you know not a lot to do other than play Animal Crossing on my Switch. And my wife was like on I was like what is that platform you're on and she was like it's TikTok and I was like what's TikTok and she goes you need to start a TikTok just because I'm so extroverted I'm outgoing type-A personality and so I was like sure let's do this thing. So I initially started TikTok creating 60 second science lessons for kids right because it's during COVID during the pandemic. They need a way to learn and kind of let out all that energy. And so I started doing the 60 second science lessons. It did all right. I mean, it wasn't doing as well as I wanted it to. Then, know, part of, think anybody who wants to go down the social media rabbit hole, you kind of have to start looking for what's trending, right? What's doing well? What kind of videos are doing well? What kind of genre? So I started noticing Interesting like growth. I call it gross out content, right? So like ticks lice mites all this stuff. I'm super infatuated with ectoparasites I love disease epidemiology. I love disease transmission. I love I mean, I literally did my master's degree on a Florida field guide to bird lice so I love like picking ectoparasites off of animals and so You know when I saw this kind of this pathway into doing really well It's like alright, I'm gonna try this and so I just started posting and that's probably another key thing to take away for anybody. You have to post a lot, right? Like, I mean, anything worth having is worth working for. And so the kind of, think, I would say, what did you call it earlier? The key to cracking the code, right? The kind of key that I found earlier was posting three times a day is huge.

02:51 Adam Holt

It's minimal like you need to post it sounds like a lot but with all the AI stuff we have now you could literally create three posts and have them ready to send out right you can you can have them scheduled and ready to send out and so even on GoDaddy I'm not for anybody who I do my business through GoDaddy my website you can go to the blog section and you can literally schedule it to post out we know that there's the ability there so three posts a day is huge right the next thing that kind of like was going on is that so I did the three posts a day, three posts a day. Finally was like, something's not working here. What's next? And so I started basically, you know, as I was doing more research, I noticed that hashtags are important. Right. And I'm like, you didn't, you don't realize how important they are. So you're like, so you start seeing them on the posts that are doing well. And so I literally went on to like my phone and onto Safari and I was like, all right, what are the top 10 viral hashtags for TikTok? It populates them down for me. It gives me literally all the top 10 hashtags and how many times they've been clicked. Easy research, right? Easy. So I started using those top 10 hashtags. Then I noticed that there was background music that went with all of them.

03:54 Adam Holt

So I figured out how to research on TikTok and find what is the top viral, you know, hashtag, you know, sorry, background music. So I did that. I kind of put all of these things together and then I started seeing some, you know, flux. I started seeing some increase in intake in the actual videos. And so my first video that went viral and I don't remember how long it was after I started. I think it was, I think I started TikTok in 2020 and then I think it was June of 2021. I did a duet. You know what a duet is on TikTok? So I did to do it for anybody who's listening and do edits were basically if somebody post a video You can click a button and you can do a duet next to their video, right? So I found I saw this video of this person that had a tick on their leg It was nice and like welped up right and the other person the video took a piece of dental floss They tied it around the tick around that where the hypostome goes into the body, right? The hypostome where everybody listening is like the mouth part that the tick insertion to the body So they tied the dental floss around it. They twirled the dental floss up and when they let it go, it popped the tick mouth part out, which was awesome. There was like no residue, no leftover ticks stuck on the thing, no tick broken in half. So I did a duet to that video explaining the exact, you know, technical details behind it, why it worked. That video hit I think almost 10 million views in a few days. And I mean,...

04:59 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. You wow.

05:17 Adam Holt

I don't know why it's the gross out content. Maybe it is, know, but like I don't know the key to what made that magic happen, but that was kind of like I would say that initial kind of like trajectory for my, you know, for my social media there. So the other cool, the other key thing is if you have a video that goes viral, you want to continue to post a lot after the video goes viral because those other videos will tend to kind of like pop up with the magic as well. They might not go as viral, but if they're decent enough videos, they'll kind of continue because now you're on that for you page.

05:47 Adam Holt

For anybody listening, there's always a for you page on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook Reels. Now we've got Clapper, Lemon8, we've got YouTube. There's so many different social media platforms. So, you know, kind of like following that, you know, all of that limelight is going to be key too. And then another thing I didn't mention is cross posting on different social media platforms.

06:08 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm, yeah.

06:08 Adam Holt

That's always important as well. And so if you are posting, you want to make sure that you're posting on all those different social media platforms, which is going to be super critically important. And you know, the beauty of all this is guess what? It's free. It's literally free, right? You can't be free. And so you don't have to pay for marketing. Don't have to. You could pay to push it, but you don't have to pay to push it. And so fast forward for me, you know, to I'm trying to think of when it happened. Think it was 2023. I had two videos that I posted that hit 50 million views each.

06:42 Dan Leibrandt

That is crazy.

06:43 Adam Holt

And so for anybody listening, the beauty of this too is it's free to post it and then if the videos do well, you know, and you're obviously at 10,000 followers, you can become part of the creator campaign and all that stuff. And that's where you can basically make the money. Any videos that are posted for over a minute, you can make money. And then essentially for any video that, I think it's around every million views, you make $100. Not the exact math, but you can kind of do the math. For my 50 million view videos, that was $5,000. Yeah. No?

07:13 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, that's not bad. So yeah, there's a lot of points that I wanna go off of there. Number one is I've been listening to a lot of Gary Vee recently and he says that all the time, that content is free, content is free. I've been telling you guys this for the past 10 years or so, no one's listening to me and now this opportunity might be over in like five to 10 years if there's some other way of consuming content, which we won't get into now, but I feel like that's important as well. The number one guy at digital marketing, that's like all he says is content is free. Like you cannot take this opportunity for granted. You can post a video for free and then get customers paying you. So that is a huge component. Then another thing you were talking about was repurposing it to social platforms or to other social platforms. I completely agree with that. But some people might be wondering where else can they repurpose it to? Where should you post it?

08:05 Adam Holt

Um, I mean, for me, I always do TikTok Instagram is huge. Facebook Reels. Here's a funny story about Facebook Reels. I didn't even know what Facebook Reels was until I think it was 2022. I was in Philadelphia living there when I was working for Douglas Products. And this Facebook Reels kind of thing was kind of becoming bigger and they were running like this, like this kind of like campaign contest where it was anybody could basically qualify to win it. Right. But essentially I was like, I don't have Facebook Reels. I'm going to start my Facebook Reels account. So I just literally repurposed all my videos. From TikTok. I'm not here. I posted 80 videos in three days. In a matter of weeks, I'm talking about two to three weeks. I went from zero followers to 16,000 followers. Literally, and I didn't necessarily win the campaign, but I qualified for it. So I got the thousand dollar bonus. Yeah.

08:36 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. No way. Wow. That is insane. Dang, that is crazy. Okay, so mainly Instagram and Facebook. Is there anywhere else or those are the main three?

09:01 Adam Holt

TikTok, Instagram, Facebook Reels. Mean, LinkedIn is huge. Why would you not do LinkedIn? Everybody should be posting on LinkedIn because I mean, I can't even tell you almost every job I've had has been because of LinkedIn. Yeah.

09:07 Dan Leibrandt

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow, no, honestly, same for me. Most of the opportunities and whatever conversations that I get into, most of them stem from LinkedIn. I originally started on Twitter. I built up a good following there. I made like barely any money from Twitter, but I've made a lot of money from LinkedIn and a lot of connections from LinkedIn. So I think that's also something important to note is that if you're looking to get serious and looking to grow your business, then you should be networking and putting out content on LinkedIn, like you said.

09:32 Adam Holt

You...

09:41 Dan Leibrandt

Repurposing it might be video it might be photos whatever like I used to post only on Twitter And then I just started repurposing all my stuff from Twitter on LinkedIn. I mean, it's the same thing...

09:51 Adam Holt

Yeah, a hundred percent. You know, kind of going back to TikTok for a second, I think one of the things for me, that LinkedIn is also global, but TikTok is global, right? And I can't tell you the people that I've met, the pest control companies that I've come in contact with. I ended up meeting this guy named Dale. Runs DAP, D-A-P-P, DAP Pest Control out of Australia, right? He was in the news. He went viral because he found the largest wasp nest ever recorded in history. It's a viral video if you go check him out. He's opening the door, the bathroom door in this person's house. I'm not kidding you. The lost nest goes from the floor up to the ceiling and wraps around. Yeah, it's insane. But I'm like, I guess my whole point is just being able to meet somebody like it opens up this opportunity like endless opportunities for networking with people just in.

10:27 Dan Leibrandt

Wow, that is crazy. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, content is really a cheat code for networking. So I'd like to dive into those two super mega viral videos that got 50 million each. So could you pick one of those and kind of dissect like how that went viral?

10:54 Adam Holt

I mean it was just honestly, I think it was more of like again gross out content, which I'm trying to pivot from now. My wife keeps telling me like I need to pivot from this gross out content stuff, which is fair. And so I'm trying to go more towards technical stuff now. Like I just got a branding campaign for a mosquito, a really cool mosquito control thing on the market. And so, but as far as like how I just was following the same, the same rules, right? I was posting, I was, I was applying the proper hashtags, adding a viral, you know, music to the back. So that's just key. Sometimes the algorithm is very interesting with TikTok. I don't think there's a perfect thing to it. The thing you have to be careful on any social media platform is becoming shadow banned. That can happen. So if you are going to ever repurpose somebody else's content, you want to make sure you get permission. You want to make sure you give them credit in the video. You can literally say like video credit. You can even tag them if possible. But I'm like, you just want to make sure that you're being very careful with any social media platform because getting shadow banned can happen. Once it happens, it can be really hard to do yourself.

11:53 Adam Holt

Yourself out of.

11:54 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, okay got it. So something you've mentioned several times is gross out content. Can you kind of explain more what that is?

12:01 Adam Holt

I call gross out content. Like, I love bot fly removals. So there's a lot of bot fly removals on TikTok. And so I just, I don't know what it is about. It's almost like a little bit about the pimple popping thing and ASMR. And so people just love that stuff. They literally dig it up. I mean, you'll, and the crazy thing I'm sure that everybody understands is like, once the algorithm sees what you like, it feeds that to you. Right.

12:12 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah Mm. Mmm, yeah.

12:24 Adam Holt

So literally when I go into my TikTok, my wife can't even watch me do it because it's like pimple popping, bot fly removal, lice. Like all this, I love following theirs. Also I am, can't think of her name. It's like the lice lady on TikTok. She's got millions of followers, but all she does is literally live. She has videos of like cleaning all the lice out of people's hair. But I, sorry.

12:29 Dan Leibrandt

Hahaha crazy. Yeah, no, I actually, I just had Jake Sheldon on the podcast who's super big into pest control Facebook ads. And we were talking about kind of the same thing, the ads that have something that's kind of scary, that kind of maybe sparks a little anxiety actually works much better than just like the standard smiling technician or the family with the dog. I mean, those are great. And maybe that's great for kind of like overall branding. But if you want to catch someone's attention and drive that engagement, usually you're gonna like what you say, I've never heard that term, but gross out content. Like, you know, it's maybe a lot of spiders or, you know, maybe it's bees, whatever. Something that's also unique. Have you noticed that as well, that it's like something unique that maybe people haven't seen before?

13:27 Adam Holt

100 % I mean when people like I think his name is like Dan the bug I can't know not Dan the bug man another guy named Dan I can't he's out of the Midwest somewhere but he was a kid who was doing a lot of social media and he was posting like brown recluse spiders that he was catching and coming into houses where there's like hundreds of them and so anything like that I mean that stuff captures people's attention because brown recluse my god like it's gonna hurt me I'm gonna get bit and then something that you know I'm gonna lose my arm or something and so that kind of stuff is very empowering but it's like you said I mean even right now I'm mosquitoes are becoming even more, you know, in the news like malaria and dengue fever. Like I literally was just on a phone call earlier with my friend who went to the West Indies a couple of weeks ago and got dengue fever. Yeah. And so I'm like, I think I think you need to interview him on your podcast because just in hearing that journey, hearing about the symptoms, hearing about how it's happening and everything, it's just it's insane to I think I think you hear about on the news, but you never think it's going to be you.

14:23 Adam Holt

You know what I mean? I think it's just very interesting. But yeah, you're 100 % right. Anything that's very, I call it gross out content again, anything that can capture somebody's attention, that's going to be huge on any on when you're posting any social media post.

14:23 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. Yeah. Definitely. So for me, for me, I used to be kind of a freelance copywriter. I used to write copy for a lot of different kinds of businesses and a lot of different kinds of copy. It might be a sales letter. It might be, you know, LinkedIn ghost writing, whatever it is. And what I've noticed and what all the top copywriters say and really people that are actually just in marketing and advertising in general is that first initial hook is the most important. Is there any particular? Hook that you're using, like what is the first like three to five seconds of your video consisting of?

15:10 Adam Holt

That's a great question. Mean, you know, I don't actually, you know, I've never even really thought about the hook and you're right. Like the kind of, whole kind of mentality behind the hook line and sinker, right? And so, you know, that's a good question. I don't actually know like what my hook is. Think. I think for me, I just make the video. I don't think about the hook to be honest with you because I feel like if you, feel like a lot of people, and this is what a lot of people get scared of when they think about making social media posts. They're like, Oh my God, it's going to take me forever. This is going to take hours. I'm past all that. I'm like, just be raw. Just give it, give, give the raw content because people love the raw content as well. You know what I So just do the video. Don't worry about editing all this stuff and trying to make it perfect. Do the video and put it out there and see what happens.

15:47 Dan Leibrandt

Mm, yeah. Uh-huh. So are you editing them yourself or do you have an editor?

15:58 Adam Holt

I do them all myself. TikTok actually has a really good editing program built into it.

16:04 Dan Leibrandt

Huh. And what does that editing look like? Are you just getting out? Are you cutting out the little blurbs or is there any, what are you doing when you're editing?

16:12 Adam Holt

Typically, depending on what I'm posting, if I'm doing something where I'm talking and I have a spiel I'm doing, just to make it to where it's not as like, you know, that kind of thing, I might go through and splice a few things out. But if I do a good... If I do a good take on the first take, then I just post it. Typically editing is just editing small things or if there's a pause, because a lot of times also I like to record it all in one session and then I might just like cut pieces out just to make it flow faster. Right, because one of the keys, the key back in the day used to be you don't want your video to be over seven seconds. That used to be, now it's changed and it's evolved, right? Cause now people want to see more. They want to hear more. So, but they, back in the day, the average watch time on any video, you can get these analytics from, from TikTok was seven seconds. Yep.

16:50 Dan Leibrandt

Really? What? I mean, I guess that's it originated from Vine, right? So I guess maybe that's what it is that people are used to Vine where you actually couldn't, it was either six or seven seconds, you couldn't post more than that. So it'd be like a, you know, crazy six second video and you just keep watching forever. But I guess they've kind of found the meta there. But to that point, how long are your videos? Have you found like a particular length or does it vary?

17:26 Adam Holt

You know what I've noticed is when you go to these followers that have like, sorry, when you go to these influencers that have millions of followers, these mega influencers, every video they post is like one minute and one second. One minute. Why? Because you only make money if it's over a minute. Yep. That goal is to try to do that right over the minute mark so that that way you can capitalize on the income.

17:37 Dan Leibrandt

Really? No, okay. Really? Okay. Okay, is that what you did for the super viral videos like the 50 million few ones or was that different? Okay, dang. Okay, so that's pretty awesome then. Okay, I never knew that then so you the video has to be over a minute long to make any money from it...

18:02 Adam Holt

Yeah. Yeah, so if we rewind back in time real quick to become part of the creator campaign and TikTok you have to have 10,000 followers There's like three different check marks There's like 10,000 followers so many likes on your videos and then block, know one other tick mark and so as long as you meet those three tick marks that you know, the software checks them off for you as you meet them Then you can become part of the creator campaign and then that at that point that's when you can start monetizing That's really like YouTube I think YouTube's what a thousand followers and then you can monetize...

18:14 Dan Leibrandt

Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, thousand and maybe 3,000 to 4,000 hours of watch time. And then maybe if you wanna do shorts, it's like 10 million, which is pretty crazy. But something else I wanted to ask you is, now how does this apply to the regular pest control owner? So maybe it's a pest control owner that's, know, let's do a specific example. Maybe they're at like, you know, just 100K a year, they're at about 10K a month. Does it make sense for them to get into TikTok or is that more of a bigger company kind of thing?

19:03 Adam Holt

You know, I think it makes sense for anybody and everybody to get into social media. I mean, why, why waste? I think here's the thing you have to be prepared for. It's like any product. Imagine, cause when I'm on TikTok and I'm selling myself, I'm selling myself as a product, right? If I'm a pest control owner and a PCO owner. So if you're going to put yourself out there in your small company and your video goes viral, you have to be prepared to be able to meet that demand. Right? So are you ready to take on what you might get back?

19:27 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm, true. Yeah. Hmm, but do you think they will go viral like it is going viral kind of a random thing because it seems like you just put out a ton of videos and occasionally they go viral or is there some like unique secrets...

19:45 Adam Holt

There's definitely like the more bait you put in the water, the more fish you catch. Right? So I'm like, if I, you just put out one video, you could put out a video that goes viral. Here's a good example. I've watched people on TikTok that have put out a video that goes viral. They might kind of keep up with it for a little bit and then they just die off. Right. So they're like viral and then it just dies off on the, don't see them post for any more at all, which is sad because they had an opportunity they could have capitalized on.

19:50 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm, yeah.

20:12 Adam Holt

So the reality though is that you're definitely, it's very, very few and far between that a single video that you post goes viral just randomly. It does happen, but it's more random. But the more you post, there's more reality that those will go viral and that you will start, you'll start feeding into the algorithm at some point. You have to. It's like you're knocking on the door and you're knocking on the door. Eventually it's going to let you in.

20:29 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, okay. Hey, can you kind of give me... Okay, okay, that's a good analogy. Then, so what would be your like practical or technical advice for someone that does start a TikTok account? Know, what does the first 30 days look like? Is it three posts a day like you said, and what do the posts consist of? Tell me about like what they should actually be doing.

20:52 Adam Holt

I mean, so again, I kind of think that that like we talked about earlier, something that's engaging, something that's captivating. So if you're a pest control owner, there's no way you're not coming across infestations of cockroaches, bed bugs, cool stuff. So get your technicians to take videos of all that stuff. Obviously you can't have anybody that's an actual customer or end user in the video, but the actual content, capitalize on that. Get your technicians, like I said, your technicians to capture all that video. It's you and you're a single owner, do that and then just start posting that stuff. You could do a Yeah, that's it. Just post.

21:24 Dan Leibrandt

That's it. And also, mean, to that point, I don't think you necessarily have to go viral. And part of it is just having that content in place. Like something that I've found work really well for me is maybe clients don't find me through the podcast, but then they find me and then they see the podcast and then they're like, you know, I saw that you have a podcast and maybe I watch an episode now because I found you out somewhere else. So the same thing applies with TikTok or any other social platform with content is that maybe they didn't find you through TikTok, but now they're looking at your TikTok and now they see all of those videos there,...

22:02 Adam Holt

Yeah, it's fair. 100%. Yeah, I mean, I don't think you, I think... And there's, actually, there's a good guy that's on TikTok that would probably be worth, you doing a podcast with he's a pest control company. I think they have like a little over 300,000 followers. It'd be very interesting to see if there's any ROI based on that. Right. Because even in his like little, what do call it? Like his little bio, you know, on his underneath his profile picture, he's got what states he services. And then he's got a Linktree that goes directly to his website, which is perfect. Great. Great. And so it'd be very interesting to find out if he's done any type of survey background find out, you know, you know, is this actually direct ROI from my TikTok post?

22:43 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, because I've heard, like, I was talking to Roger Wakefield maybe like a year ago at this point. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he's like one of the most famous plumbers. He's got like, you know, 600,000 followers on YouTube. Yeah, so 600,000 on YouTube, I think like 600,000 on TikTok. And he's got like the kind of this, you know, Southern Texan accent. He's like, you know.

22:58 Adam Holt

Jeez.

23:08 Dan Leibrandt

If I could get rid of TikTok, you I would do it today. And it's like, what do you know, you have like 600,000 followers, but he was saying that because he basically doesn't generate any customers from it. But again, that, that, could vary for different businesses and also it ties into the brand. Right. So I'd say at a certain point, it doesn't even matter if it doesn't generate any direct sales. But again, having that as an asset to where people can see, wow, you know, you're, you're like huge on TikTok and we can.

23:12 Adam Holt

Ha ha.

23:35 Dan Leibrandt

See your technicians working and maybe the founder's story and all of that. I think as we progress and there's more AI stuff that people are gonna want more connection and that instead of like a company that either doesn't exist or it's all about AI stuff that now they can see the founder or the technicians talking and they can feel more of a connection with...

23:57 Adam Holt

Yeah, so you're actually kind of pinning the tail on the donkey. Mean, like when I moved to San Diego last year, sorry, geez, two years ago now, we got there and we were like, hey, where do we want to go eat sushi? Right. So I got on TikTok, I put in San Diego sushi.

24:12 Adam Holt

Came up with Cannonball sushi over on the beach and we went there and we loved it. We could see all the stuff on the video. We could see all the sushi. We could see the, you know, the beautiful view of the water. We could see everything. So that's literally how I found the sushi place. When I wanted to chiropractor, I typed in San Diego chiropractor and TikTok. You know, I'm basically as a search engine now.

24:31 Dan Leibrandt

Uh-huh. No, I think a lot of people don't see it in that light and perspective. But I was just looking at, and not even me, I don't use TikTok. I'm maybe using Google or maybe YouTube. But I saw a study recently, which again, all studies vary, but around 40 % of Gen Z is using TikTok to search for what they wanna search for. 40%, like if you're a pest control owner and grain that in your mind, like a lot of your younger customers that are you know, younger people that might be in their 20s or so, that are finally growing up, they're finally starting to buy homes, those people might be searching on TikTok. And I think that might be the real use case is that maybe it's not too relevant now, but as Gen Z starts to grow up and buy homes, then it's gonna be super relevant.

25:05 Adam Holt

Yep. Yeah, and let's talk about the fact that your Gen Z and all your younger population who are buying homes, they're also going to be more willing to adapt to the things like the technology that's coming along, like the electronic rodent monitoring, different things that you want to basically take advantage of. They're going to be the ones that are like, yeah, sounds good to me, let's do it.

25:34 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. For you search engine optimize your videos at all or does that kind of happen naturally?

25:42 Adam Holt

I would say it happens naturally. I definitely know. I don't think there's any way in TikTok to do the SEO for your videos. Not liking GoDaddy or other website platforms.

25:48 Dan Leibrandt

Okay. Okay. Yeah, no, just maybe having it like as the title or something, right?

25:57 Adam Holt

Yeah, so I do even the title though is weird, right? Cause the title on your TikTok video like overlays over your video. So I don't think it, I don't know if it actually, I don't know if there's any SEO behind that, but I'm like valid point. I mean, I definitely, that's to me what the most important thing behind all the hashtags is for, right? That's going to be your SEO for TikTok and any of your social media platforms is the hashtags and helping those, hopefully hopping into those different algorithmic things.

26:13 Dan Leibrandt

Mm. Yeah, what hashtags are you using?

26:24 Adam Holt

FY, FYP, for you, for your page, viral, trending, depending on what you're doing, would do gross, gross out. I might do bug talk for things I'm doing, you know, it just depends.

26:27 Dan Leibrandt

Okay. Okay, so is there a limit on how many hashtags you can have or do they at a certain point diminish?

26:41 Adam Holt

I think it's like 40 or 50 is something crazy. You don't ever need to do a ton. Mean between five and ten is pretty good. But the cool thing is as you're typing them into TikTok, it literally tells you how many times that thing has been clicked. So like I think for you pages like somewhere in this billions almost to trillions. Yeah.

26:44 Dan Leibrandt

Wow. Wow. Yeah. No, I mean that that's got to be the top one, right?

27:04 Adam Holt

Yeah, I mean like your goal is to get onto somebody's for you page. If you can do that, you've just won the golden ticket.

27:11 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, awesome. And then what about filming? So are you using your iPhone and can other, you know, maybe it's a different kind of phone, like, practically for maybe pest control owners that are listening to this, can they use their phone for content or do they need like a professional camera?

27:27 Adam Holt

Great question. 100 % use your phone. Just remember like if you're in a house and you're videoing like a bed bug infestation, make sure you pop on that flash. Make sure you're kind of clicking on the actual like, you phone to, you know, you can click on the phone to kind of focus it out a little bit. Make sure you're actually trying to take a relatively top notch quality video. Don't just turn it on video and be like, you know, and like, here's a video. And then you get home and you're like, my God, this thing looks like shit. Sorry. You just don't want to avoid that. And so you do want to try to put a little bit of effort into it, but flash is important. It's the same thing. I tell PCOs when they're trying to send me a picture of a bug, right? The tech is just send me a picture of bug. I'm like, that looks like a piece of pepper, right?

27:53 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Mm-hmm. I know.

28:07 Adam Holt

You didn't give me a size reference like a coin if you can you didn't give me anything to try to get an idea of what I'm actually looking at...

28:13 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, trust me. I know I've looked at a lot of different pest control Google business profiles And I just can't believe it's some of them So a good amount of Google business profiles that they have don't have any pictures on them Or you know, maybe it's five or whatever and then some of the ones that do have pictures on them Which maybe it might be a smaller company. It's like super blurry photos It's like, you know a phone from like 15 years ago, you know, not even I don't know Yeah, no, so definitely just having like that...

28:32 Adam Holt

Bye. Out the phone.

28:41 Dan Leibrandt

A decent standard of quality. It doesn't have to be professional, but maybe an iPhone in the past few years or so, is there any specific recommendation there or does any iPhone work?

28:50 Adam Holt

Think any iPhone works. I usually like to try to get at least a relatively bigger phone just for me being able to see it, being able to use it. You don't have to go with the Max, but I like to at least go with a higher quality. Then Amazon sells like a little thing you can plug into the, you know, the micro USB-C area. And then you can do like a Bluetooth type microphone. If you're going to talk, you could do that. I highly recommend to people. Usually don't talk. If I'm just doing a video of like an infestation, I usually record the infestation and then I like to green screen myself.

29:09 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm, yeah.

29:20 Adam Holt

Over it later on.

29:21 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

29:22 Adam Holt

That way you can put on your nice company shirt. You can look nice and neat. You can green screen over it and then you can put in your microphone and you can talk about it. Right. I actually recommend to do that later on. Or if you don't want to be in it, just video the content and then later on do voice overlay because then you can do voice overlay and then you can transcribe everything into the captions because captions is huge. You want to do captions. There are people that are, you know, harder hearing. There are people of, you know, not being able to, you know, completely deaf. And so the captions just helps you capture more audience.

29:29 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, no, I've seen that just about all the viral videos that I see. Usually I have captions of some sort and it does make it more engaging. Like it gives you kind of a reason to follow through with the video. And do you just use the standard built-in TikTok captions or anything else?

30:07 Adam Holt

Yeah, just they've actually they're always evolving, right? So they've got more and more and more. And so even now the captions that I love the fact that they've added variety just like they always do. And so I typically I like to go with the one where it kind of like pops up the words as it's going along. But there is no rhyme to the magic. You might find one that works better for you. So I wouldn't say there's any I wouldn't say there's any, you know, virality to any specific caption.

30:21 Dan Leibrandt

Mm-hmm. Yeah, cool. And you kind of already talked on this, but yeah, what about equipment? Do you need like a tripod? Do you need a nice mic? What do you need?

30:39 Adam Holt

That's fair. Do actually have like probably if you can get those relatively inexpensive like tripods that kind of fold down and you can just pop them up, you know, if you want those are beautiful because you can carry them with them like in a bag like if you're carrying like a technician bag, you can literally put it in your bag, which is nice. But you really don't need that for when you're filming. Mean, if you're filming a bed bug infestation, I mean, you're literally going to be on your phone and you're going to be walking around right and capture or you're going to be getting up close. You're not going to really be need a tripod for that. Now, later on, if you're trying to do like a green screen over it, a tripod that's gonna be important. You definitely don't wanna be sitting there and trying to do like this and wiggling everywhere and people are gonna get dizzy and vomit from watching your video. You don't want that.

31:17 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, okay. So you typically recommend that style. It's pretty engaging that maybe you or a technician can take a video of whatever's going on in the house. Maybe it's an infestation or something. And then you can just later on then take a video of you like basically doing a green screen and talking over it.

31:35 Adam Holt

Yeah, and or I mean, I have seen really viral videos where they're like kind of they're videoing the infestation and they're just talking into the phone as they video it. Like, wow, man, look at this damn shit. This thing's huge. You know, and they're kind of going over it whatever it is. And so those kind of things can be fun as well. Mean, the rawness is huge. You know, the rawness of any video is going to be massive because people don't want to see you. I can go watch TV and watch all the pre-recorded, you know, acting out stuff. That's not what people go to social media for. They go to social media for the raw content.

31:46 Dan Leibrandt

Haha...

32:06 Adam Holt

Like you said, they want to connect with you. They want to connect with the person on the other side. So being engaging and having anything that's captivating is going to be huge.

32:06 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm. Awesome. And then where do you see TikTok going in the future? You know, the next few years, is it going to be the same? How do you think it's going to evolve?

32:22 Adam Holt

It's already evolving. I mean, both me and my wife are both influencers on TikTok. And so, she's way more on the side of like getting gifts and everything because she goes live a lot. And so we're already noticing that the, they've already started making. So originally if you were to get a gift on TikTok, cause I've watched people who get crazy amounts of gifts. Right? I mean, I was literally, if you go on and you're watching it, you can click on the people. Like anytime you're watching people on their live, you can go click on their little like ranking. And then it shows you everybody, right? So like there's people that are getting 2.6 million of these like things a day, which 2.6 million equates to $26,000. And then takes half of it. It's only getting 13,000. I think now TikTok's even taking more of it.

33:07 Adam Holt

After all the stuff that happened politically recently where they were going to shut it down. And so I don't see TikTok leaving. I don't know, but I do see other social media platforms trying to come up and compete with them for sure. If you haven't heard of Clapper, Clapper is a competitive one. Lemon8 is another one. That's another one put out, I think, by the creators of TikTok. I think there's one called Red or RedNote. So there's all.

33:24 Dan Leibrandt

No, I haven't heard of it, somehow. Yeah, RedNote.

33:33 Adam Holt

Yeah, there's always like competing ones, but RedNote, we can't even go a lot of times reading most of it because I think it's actually in their language. Yeah.

33:39 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah. Which I don't know, maybe if you're on the platform long enough. For people that don't know, RedNote is kind of, when TikTok got banned, then everyone was moving to RedNote, which is like the Chinese equivalent, even though TikTok is Chinese owned already, because people couldn't use TikTok at the time. But cool.

33:50 Adam Holt

Yep. It was like the social media platform in China versus, you know, having TikTok here in the US. So yeah, I agree with you. But I'm like, I tried to go over to it wasn't bad, but I was like, you know. Challenging for sure. But there's just I think the reality is that you want to stick with the ones that are going to be most profitable and connect with people, you know, for you. And so YouTube's obviously huge. YouTube's a little more challenging to post on the TikTok is I love TikTok because it's just man, I can do it on my phone. It's quick. It's fast. Facebook, Facebook Reels, quick, fast Instagram, quick, fast. YouTube's a little more challenging to post on.

34:20 Dan Leibrandt

Mm. It is. Yeah, well, YouTube, what I've noticed is that it's still kind of built around doing long form content of maybe it's a longer 30 minute to an hour long video. I mean, do want to like, okay, well, do I want to schedule it? What kind of description do I want to have? What playlist do I want to put it in? Or I feel like they're a little bit late to the game of making it super easy to post.

34:52 Adam Holt

Yeah, yeah. And another thing I want to kind of add to this is like, you're on LinkedIn. I know most people, if you're not on LinkedIn, you should be on LinkedIn. It's just like stupid not to be on there. Sorry. You can just network with so many people. Mean, I met Dan through LinkedIn. I meet people through But there was a post a couple of weeks ago about four rodents in Riverside County, which is near LA for anybody who's listening. And they all tested positive for bird flu influenza. Right, which is just crazy. But an article like that, if you're on LinkedIn and you're paying attention to stuff, is an opportunity for you to take that article, repost that article with your branding and everything and kind of talk to your community about it. Right. Because this is where paying attention to some of this is important. There was that cool article about Gene Hackman and his wife and how she died from hantavirus.

35:36 Adam Holt

Crazy, it's very rare, doesn't happen very often, but another cool way for you to kind of drive home how important all these things are and rodent protection and all these things are and ways you can help provide that solution for your customer.

35:49 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that's a really good point actually that you don't necessarily need anything important or interesting to talk about, but there are important and interesting things going on all the time. So maybe, I don't know, for the past few months, you just haven't really seen an infestation. Usually, mean, usually in pest control, there's always something kind of crazy going on, like you know. But maybe there's not really something going on or you wanna push for something like three videos a day and you wanna come up with new content ideas, then that's something you can do as well is that... Reacting to maybe there's big stories in the area or maybe even across the US that there's like some you know crazy disease or some crazy puss and you as a pest control expert actually have Authority to talk on that like a lot of people a lot of pest control guys may be like I've only been doing it for you know five years ten years That's still five or ten more years more than everyone else you know I feel like pest control owners know a lot more than they think...

36:42 Adam Holt

100 % yeah you're right on point there and I agree with that and I just I think taking advantage of any of the stuff could be you know useful and then if anybody needs content to post you can always reach out to Adam Holt NameDatBug Consulting and I will happily help you out with all this.

36:56 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And maybe last question I'd like to ask here is, again, we've kind of gone over this, but maybe any extra tips around this is coming up with content ideas. I feel like this might be what stops a lot of people from even getting into content to begin with, because maybe they see it as a long-term commitment, and one of the biggest hurdles is, well, how do I come up with content? Mean, like you said, three videos a day. Mean, that's 90 videos a month. How do I keep coming up with new ideas? So when you're posting, you know, like, you know 60 to 90 videos a month. How do you come up with all those ideas?

37:28 Adam Holt

So I don't post three posts a day anymore. I'm not going to lie. Like, I mean, I'm at my over half a million followers and I want to keep growing, but I've just been kind of pivoting and focusing on the business right now. And I'm going to build out more obviously as I work, as I try to get the business growing. But I mean, with that being said, I would probably just focus on things that are important seasonally in your area, right? So if it's summertime and you have a lot of mosquitoes, go do some cool mosquito videos, right? Like make those connections, excuse me, reach out to people because I like, did a brand for a BugMD. They're a pretty big thing out there. And so they're, offer like these really cool mosquito patches. So I did like a branding campaign for them and did a cool video. And that one, I spent a little more time editing because I wanted to, right? But I'm like, at the end of the day, I still think I spent like, maybe like 20 minutes making the whole video. Like it didn't take long. You know, I had to go out and like set a few scenes and do that, but I'm just like, it doesn't take long. And I mean, you could literally just get like a Fight the Bite poster, right? For like, everybody knows about the five D's of prevention. If you don't, there's a lot, there's the five D's of prevention. You could find a five D's of prevention poster. You could green screen yourself over it you could make a video. And the beauty too is that now you've got all these videos in your repertoire. So you can always recycle them, repurpose them. And once you make them, you've got them forever.

38:42 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, I've seen some TikTok creators totally take advantage of that like almost a crazy extent, but maybe their most viral video They'll just keep reposting it and it keeps performing it. Have you done that or seen that yourself?

38:53 Adam Holt

100 % yeah, yeah for sure. Yep. I've done that same video...

38:56 Dan Leibrandt

So what does that look like then? Let's say someone actually does have a viral post, do you post the same thing a month later or every month after that?

39:07 Adam Holt

Yeah, you're not like just reposting it every day. You might repost it like you might wait until you know, things kind of die down and then post it again to try to see if you can to kind of test the theory, right? And see if it like kind of like brings everything back. But yeah, I mean, probably a month later is probably a good solid idea. Maybe, you know, a couple of it really just depends on because remember, the goal is if you have a video that goes viral, you want to try to post other videos to follow behind that virality. Right? We're posting different content, maybe similar, but to follow behind it. Because like a lot of people like, let's say, I don't know, let's say they post a viral video of their, of their pig having, you know, babies. Right?

39:42 Adam Holt

And that goes viral. So then the next video might be a week later of all the babies and how they're growing up, right? It might be that, you know, them just kind of going through that journey. And so, or it might be, this went really well and I live on a farm. Now I'm going to post a video of my horse giving birth. You know, I'm going to post a video of this because I know that this type of content people like and it's going viral.

39:46 Dan Leibrandt

Okay. Yeah, yeah, okay, cool. So what I'm getting from this is that sharing your real life experience is huge and especially, know, pest control, even though it seems kind of boring and it's not that sexy, it's actually still really interesting that there are all these different bugs. Every single service you do is different and you're getting calls all the time about a different infestation, a different kind of pest, whatever.

40:09 Adam Holt

Huge. Very interesting.

40:25 Dan Leibrandt

So don't think that like, oh, well, pest control, who cares about that? Well, they just care about like, I don't know, whatever good looking girls. They're like, know, that there's still like you've shown you have over 500,000 followers on TikTok that there's still a demand for this and that people, as long as you do it right, are willing to watch videos of pest control and pests and all that kind of stuff.

40:46 Adam Holt

100 % yeah, and I'm like the beauty is also like I don't know like if you ever if you're a PCO and you ever start creating like a certain You know product that's a good opportunity on TikTok to sell that product right especially go direct to consumer I mean, I just look at like there was an article that came out about a month or two ago on LinkedIn a guy posted that I follow that um, and we knew this was gonna happen is that bed bugs are now actually being confirmed to transmit MRSA Everybody know what MRSA is...

41:11 Dan Leibrandt

I didn't see that. Yeah, MRSA's bad.

41:16 Adam Holt

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. So it's a staph infection literally on crack is what it is. It's basically gonna be the most similar thing to getting a brown recluse bite. It's gonna be a gangrenous necrotizing type wound. And so essentially it's just gonna rot away the skin. But now the bed bugs are transmitting it via mechanical transmission, which means that they walk over you, they can now transmit that to you. And so we've known that's been a possibility. We've all talked about it from like the BCE perspective, but it's just never been confirmed.

41:20 Dan Leibrandt

Cheers. Dang, that is crazy.

41:42 Adam Holt

But a great thing to capitalize on, right? You can make a video as a PCO owner. You could do like a bed bug, cool bed bug video you record, and then you could talk about how, let us help keep you safe from things like MRSA.

41:54 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that's a great kind of selling angle. And last question I've got for you before we wrap up, Adam, is there any particular pests that you've seen go viral? Like maybe it's spiders or raccoons, or can it really be any kind of pest?

42:09 Adam Holt

Aw man, it can be anything. There's like a, there's a guy that, there's some of those pest control company owners out there that have like, I guess the dogs that go get rodents. Those go viral, but I mean, definitely like ticks, lice, spiders, roaches. I mean, there was that viral video where the kid bought the Advion cockroach gel bait off Amazon. He went around and like, so this is also another thing that's just huge that I think people need to be caught up in the media. This kid who went viral, he bought the stuff off Amazon and with Advion Cockroach Gel Bait, you're just supposed to, per the label, you're supposed to kind of do like little dots, you know, every so many feet. He just literally doing like cock. And so the video is of all the roaches dying and I'm like, well, of course they're all dead. You put out like tons of this product.

42:49 Dan Leibrandt

Haha haha...

42:57 Adam Holt

But the message that I received from this video is, wow, you're misapplying the product and you're doing it illegally according to the label. Right. And so, but I think my message that I wanted to like go do a duet to this is like, this is why it's important to hire a professional. Right. Following the label. We're keeping you safe. We're keeping your environment safe. All of the above. You know, these are the things you want to check off the box of what we're doing for you.

43:05 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm. So awesome, man. Well, I think this is a great podcast. I think this is like a complete masterclass to TikTok specifically for pest control. I think this is a great podcast. Think people should have learned a lot. And also, again, I feel like all of these principles can really apply to all the other social platforms as well. And really, like you said, maybe you're making it for TikTok, but then they get repurposed to all the other platforms as well. So great to have you on, Adam. And where can people find you, learn more about you and your business?

43:28 Adam Holt

Hahaha Appreciate you. Thank you so much again for having me on again if you want to reach out to me directly It's just [phone number removed] again That's [phone number removed] You can also find me on my website at namedatbug.com that's deas and dog at so namedatbug.com and My email is [email address removed]

44:14 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And then what about social media? So people should follow you on TikTok, LinkedIn. What else? How can they find you?

44:19 Adam Holt

Everything is branded Name.Dat.Bug. So DAT not that unfortunately I wanted to name that bug, but it was already taken. Yeah, yeah, right exactly. But thanks again for having me and Mahalo everybody.

44:27 Dan Leibrandt

That's too bad. No, name that bug, I like it's got a ring to it. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much again for coming on and it was great to have you Yeah, awesome, man cool...

44:38 Adam Holt

Thank you so much.