Guest Post: I don't feel cool on TikTok (but I am.)
Navigating BookTok, Twitter, and IG Near Fifty with Author Lainey Cameron
Meet Lainey Cameron—digital nomad, fiction author, and TikTok wisdom dispenser.
This is part 3 of My So-Called Middle Life Series.
Lainey Cameron and I run a Writers’ Support Group together. We recently sat down to talk about what it’s like to create content on TikTok and other platforms as middle-aged women.
Lainey Cameron is the women’s fiction, bestselling author of the book, The Exit Strategy. Before writing, she worked in marketing for tech startups. Lainey lives as a digital nomad with her husband by the beach in Puerto Escondido, Mexico. You can also watch her on TikTok.
Why TikTok
Charlotte Dune: You and I didn't grow up with social media. We both came to social media in mid-life. I started my author Instagram account when I was 39. When did you start your author social media?
Lainey Cameron: I'm 49, turning 50 next April, and I've been doing this for about seven years. At first, I had a Facebook account. I held off on Instagram for two or three years while I was writing my novel, until another author basically kicked me and said, “You need to get on Instagram! You have a very interesting life that people would be interested in!”
So, I've been on Instagram for four or five years, and on TikTok for less than a year.
I share my life and talk about books and writing, which grew my audience on Instagram to 8,000+ followers, and on TikTok I have about 1,400 followers.
Charlotte Dune: Why did you decide to start creating TikTok content in your late forties?
Lainey Cameron: I ran marketing for several startups, and one of the things that's interesting about startup marketing is you're always in a new space where you don't know what's gonna work until you try it, and that mindset has helped when it comes to book marketing and social media because the reality is nobody knows what works and what doesn't work.
If you expect someone to hand you the formula, you'll always be disappointed, because none of us know what we're doing, and it's all new.
TikTok is brand new for women's fiction, which is the genre I write in. No one has broken through in women's fiction via TikTok. So, I'm out there experimenting, trying to see if something will work.
Charlotte Dune: Why do you think there isn’t a big women’s fiction community on TikTok?
For the most part, reviewers and readers drive BookTok, not authors, aside from Colleen Hoover, goddess of TikTok. She shares her very funny, genuine, and amusing life, but it's not like she was a nobody when she got on TikTok. She had a following, and awesome books, and that following grew and grew and reached an even younger audience.
Also, the first generation of BookTokers skew younger, and teens and twenties read more fantasy. They grew up with Harry Potter. They're also reading young adult books. Maybe one day they’ll read women’s fiction about women’s transformational journeys.
The audience that reads women's fiction is on TikTok. There are a lot of women in their thirties, forties, probably billions at this point, certainly millions; they're just not there looking for books necessarily.
Charlotte Dune: Many women our age use TikTok to consume content, but you’re the only one I know creating content on the platform.
Lainey Cameron: The people our age who use TikTok are the ones who have something to say. Either they’re political or they have a business. They aren’t stereotypical TikTok creators.
GenX Insecurities
Charlotte Dune: I had some insecurities when I started “creating content,” which is different from having a personal account. Would people I knew IRL think it was dumb? I thought nobody will look at my posts because I'm not some young hot chick in a bikini.
Charlotte Dune: Did you have insecurities when you first started on social media?
Lainey Cameron: I had more fear around Twitter. I've really stepped back from Twitter because I worry about making one misstep and the mob mentality.
You can make an honest mistake, but the mob comes after you, 400,000 people retweet it, and next thing you know, you're the headline of Buzzfeed.
It’s easy to say something that you don't know is offensive, possibly wasn't offensive 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, and you’re living in ignorance.
I'm not saying, “Oh my goodness, it's so awful that we have to live in this politically correct world.” No. It's wonderful that language is evolving and that we're all becoming more educated, but as a Scottish woman, there are a lot of nuanced terms that have weight in America that I don't understand or have the cultural context for. So, my fear is around unintentionally causing harm.
I wish we could all be more gracious with each other in assuming positive intent. I try to assume people are coming from their life experiences and not trying to be negative, nasty, or mean—but Twitter, especially, is so toxic.
Charlotte Dune: Speaking of fear, are you worried about the Chinese Communist Party using TikTok to spy on users?
Lainey Cameron: I am cautious. I’m a little worried. I have some fear around that, but there are many things we should worry about. Not to pick on Google, because they all do it, but if you have Gmail, google scans your emails, advertises to you, and sells your information to third parties. I’m very aware of how much our data is being sold.
Charlotte Dune: Or if anyone sues you, they can do discovery on all your emails.
Lainey Cameron: Yeah, unless you plan to live your life device-free, your data is being sold. It’s funny sometimes though for authors. Google needs a writer filter for their ad spends. We research our characters and then get ads for them! The main character of my next book is going to Dubai, so I get ads for five-star Dubai hotels. Next, they’ll be selling us kitchen knives to kill with.
Goals
Charlotte Dune: What is the goal of your TikTok account?
Lainey Cameron: It is experimental for me. I want to see what works.
It’s less about selling my book because I only have one book out. It’s more effective if you have many books, otherwise, the ROI may not be great, because TikTok is very time-consuming.
I'm less scared of newer technology than many my age, so I can learn what's working and have a point of view, and be able to help fellow writers. I don't mind doing stuff that doesn't work, my time is not so precious, although I'm sure I waste a lot of time experimenting.
It would also be nice to appeal to a younger audience.
My hope is to work out how to get in front of people who would like my novel, The Exit Strategy, which is a feminist book, so to attract people interested in feminist books.
How to Tok
Charlotte Dune: What was your approach to learning TikTok?
Lainey Cameron: I got a TikTok account, and I watched it for like 10 minutes a week. Each time, I was stunned like, what the hell is this thing? What on earth am I looking at? And I put the phone away. It was a good six months to a year later that I came back and followed people relevant to women’s fiction. But I don’t recommend this as an approach!
Charlotte Dune: Did you watch videos on how to edit or read any guides?
Lainey Cameron: I joined a couple of TikTok Facebook groups that were doing how-to videos. I also took a $30 class where someone was teaching the basics. It was helpful.
When you log onto TikTok the first time, it’s all dance videos. Many people get on and get right back off, or worse, get on and find a new time sink and lose their productivity.
TikTok is very effectively profiling you and it's profiling what you watch to conclude what you like, and it's profiling who watches and likes your stuff to conclude who they should show your stuff to.
If you watch a bunch of dance videos and travel videos, TikTok thinks—okay, here's a person who wants to interact with dancers and travelers. Then when you share book flip posts, which is a very popular thing where you're flipping through the pages of a book with an overlay of catchy text, TikTok shows your book videos to people who like dance videos and want to travel to Mauritius.
I had an extra challenge with my TikTok, which is that my phone has a Mexican sim card, so TikTok thought I should appeal to a Mexican audience in Spanish, even though I was posting in English.
So, I followed as many people as I could in my space, and instead of going to the “For You Page,” which is the default, I went to the “Follow” page when I opened the app, and that helped. Now, with the odd exception of like sexy, hot women from Mexico in bikinis, I mostly get book stuff
Charlotte Dune: How easy is it for newbies to use TikTok?
TikTok has improved a lot since I began, but from a tech person's perspective, the user interface is horrible. Every time I used it, I would be like, how could this function so badly? It sucks.
For example, you edit a video and then you click forward and add some text, and then you think, oh shit, I forgot something, but if you click backward, you lose everything.
As usability goes, TikTok is one of the least usable platforms, almost unusable.
Charlotte Dune: My theory is that they're trying to keep their bandwidth usage low because TikTok works much better on bad internet than Instagram. Everything is designed for slow service, so they can reach the whole world. They're not storing the rest of your video in its un-finalized form.
Lainey Cameron: Yes. I usually edit off TikTok. It's gotten better though. The last update lets you splice the video and trim sections.
Live Tok
Charlotte Dune: Do you go live on TikTok?
Lainey Cameron: I've only done it once for Women's Fiction Day. It was shocking to me how many people watched. On Instagram live, I wouldn't get a huge audience from people that don't follow me. TikTok definitely shows your live streams to a much broader audience than your TikTok videos. I had just over 1,000 followers on TikTok at the time and 800 people simultaneously watched my live. They popped on fast. I was petrified, because on Instagram, if you go live, or on Facebook, you risk getting spammy and sexual comments.
Though on TikTok, you can nominate someone, anyone to moderate and delete comments, which made me feel better. Last minute, I asked my hubby to moderate, but I didn't get any negative comments.
Charlotte Dune: That correlates with my user experience of watching lives on TikTok. I'll click the live tab and see everything that’s weird on the internet. It's that Omegle experience, the good and the bad.
Lainey Cameron: I thought about doing a live author interview series on TikTok, once a week pick a different author to talk about their books. I don’t want to use my time right now for that, but I think it would work well.
Time Clock
Charlotte Dune: How long do you spend planning, making, and optimizing your TikTok videos?
Lainey Cameron: All the TikTok influencers selling TikTok guides would say to spend a few hours batching content on a Sunday, or an hour a day. They say to post three or four times a day.
I don’t do that.
I can't even imagine the time it would take me to create three to four TikToks a day.
It would be half the day. I’m not snappy with creating TikToks.
The easy ones are the talk-to-the-camera ones. Rant to the camera about a controversy, like what's going down in Writerland today. Everything else takes longer.
One of my most popular TikToks is me talking about a book trope I hate and why it inspired me to write my novel. It’s just me talking to the camera.
The other one that's easy is upload a bunch of travel videos and sync them to music, but that isn’t as relevant to my writer niche.
Serious TikTok creators are spending hours every day creating content and watching content to work out what's trending.
You also have to figure out what your own sizzle is gonna be, your own hot take.
I don't find it fun to imitate trends and dance. That's just not that enjoyable to me.
Fun Tok?
Charlotte Dune: Yeah, I wouldn't do things you don't enjoy. What percentage of creating content and being on social media is “fun” for you versus feeling like “work” or a mission.
Lainey Cameron: Do not do it if you hate it, I’m a big believer in that. On Instagram, I enjoy interacting with people because sharing books has an impact. When someone says to me, “Oh, I bought and read that book because you recommended it on your podcast,” that gives me a real kick.
Like, last week, my author friend Sharon Peterson was at her son's school in Washington State, and the nurse at the school in this tiny town knew about Sharon’s book because she randomly follows me.
Uplifting other authors on Instagram is rewarding, but TikTok right now is more frustrating than fun.
Reel Talk
Charlotte Dune: Did you find using Instagram reels equally shitty or easier?
Lainey Cameron: Reels weren't so easy either. They have usability issues too. I’m not a fan of the fact that Instagram is forcing reels down everybody's throat. It was a dumb move on their behalf. Instead of working out how to serve their vibrant community better than TikTok, they duplicated TikTok and tried to become TikTok. It's just dumb.
In general, though, Instagram was easier in the beginning in terms of gaining followers in the book community. There was a kind of format too—post a photo of your book, a pretty shelf, a little travel as well. I'm there as “personality,” a real person you're following. A lot of my followers are other writers, and other women's fiction authors, which is not a bad thing. Writers read, and if I can raise the profile of another writer, that’s great.’
I think Instagram is nicer in many ways compared to TikTok because it’s got multiple sub-communities of book genres. In TikTok, you're seeing fewer genres.
Teen Google
Lainey Cameron: There are also many articles talking about how people 25 and under use TikTok as their primary search engine. They are no longer going to Google when they have a question. They're going to TikTok.
Charlotte Dune: I do it myself. I don't have an author TikTok account. I’ve never posted. I just consume content and search for things.
Lainey Cameron: What do you look for? Like recipes?
Charlotte Dune: Random stuff, like, “how to best dry a pair of sneakers.” I’m interested in autism, so I search for autism videos, really many, many different things. I like hearing first-person accounts.
Lainey Cameron: Right, I hate having to be so purely on one topic. I have Crohn's. I'm a Spoonie, and I love watching fellow Spoonies, but it’s really off-brand for my TikTok.
I'm gonna have to get a second TikTok account so I can watch whatever I want.
Grow Time
Charlotte Dune: How hard is it to grow on TikTok?
Lainey Cameron: The last two algorithm updates changed things. I don't know if it's realistic now for authors to start TikToks with the goal of going viral, like good luck, fair you well.
TikTok’s number one metric is time viewed. The concept is, if you've got a 15-second video, you want 12 to 14 seconds watch time, which means people are watching it all the way through to the end. If you've got a seven or a six-second video, you also want a 14-second watch time, which means people are watching it again and again. This is why you see people do these things or these thick texts that you can't read. They want you to watch it again and again to read the text, which is so gamey and dumb to me.
Instead of focusing on making valuable content, people focus on scheming and out-gaming the algorithm to get more views.
I see a lot of authors in Facebook groups complaining about TikTok and their limited reach on the app. It's like no matter what you do, you can’t get more than a few hundred views.
It used to be much easier to end up with several thousand views on one TikTok video.
Though TikTok also increased the length of regular videos you can post, so you can have a real conversation about things, which is positive.
Bot Toks
Lainey Cameron: Also, you have to be careful about who follows you. If someone is very obviously a bot—has a weird name, is a single dad looking for love, is a 40-year-old-surgeon, or has no profile picture—try and remove them, that way you show up more to the people who actually care about your content, which boosts you in the algorithm. They say you should do it on Instagram as well, but who has time for this?
I’m not going through my 8,000 followers to check if they’re humans.
Table Tok
Charlotte Dune: Have you ever considered doing a YouTube channel? Why did you decide on these platforms versus other platforms?
Lainey Cameron: TikTok is where people are buying books. Fantasy books and books in other genres became bestsellers on the back of going viral on TikTok.
Charlotte Dune: There's a BookTalk table at the Barnes and Noble. There's no BookTube table.
Lainey Cameron: Exactly. There's no bookstagram table either.
Existential Read
Charlotte Dune: Do you go through existential questions? Like why am I creating content? What is the world doing? Why is the world so consumed with things designed to circulate for the sake of circulating?
Lainey Cameron: I took a social media sabbatical for a month and a half, with the exception of posting my podcast episodes. I did this last year also. Though I did put stuff on my IG story because I got pleasure from interacting with people who reacted to my story. I enjoy throwing a photo of here's where I am and what I'm doing, but that’s for a much smaller audience, 40 to a hundred people. Maybe even less the way Instagram's going. Nobody's seeing anything anymore. Normally the people who would see my post would be in the 500+ range, but the energy that went into creating posts and writing captions was so much greater. It was taking maybe an hour a day for me to do one IG post, plus I tend to write fairly long captions.
Charlotte Dune: They're like microblog posts.
Lainey Cameron: Yeah. I really question, is it worth my time? Is this really how I want to spend my time? But on the other hand, I want to share reviews of the books I read, and my largest audience is on Instagram.
Advice for Other Authors?
Charlotte Dune: Do you recommend creating content on TikTok to other authors?
Lainey Cameron: If a woman's fiction author asks me right now, “Should I get on TikTok?” My answer is, not yet. It’s not worth your time yet.
Want More?
TikTokers Recommended by Lainey:
Thanks for reading!
If you’d like to be interviewed or to write a guest post for my Substack, please reach out.
This is part 3 of “My So-Called Middle Life” series.