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TikTok, the video platform and social media sensation sweeping the nation, is moving beyond entertainment and trying to help businesses and entrepreneurs make money moves—not by making ads, but by putting themselves out there in the form of 90-second clips.
Take it from Pati Jacobs and Max Kruemcke, owners of Hill Country-local Bastrop Cattle Co., who joined the platform a little over a week ago to talk about their grass-fed beef and have already reported a "significant" sales bump. Kruemcke, @maxjcookie on the app, once went viral to the tune of nine million views.
Bastrop Cattle Co.'s TikToks do not have a high-production value, nor do they look like something you would see on a social media influencer's feed, but they show someone more valuable to the app's audience: real people running a small business.
"The more that I was working with the cattle, the more that I would go and film with them, people just kept on going wild for it," Kruemcke said. "It was so confusing because it was not a high production value sort of scenario, it's just me walking around."
@bastropcattleco Our first ad that we made to introduce what we do! #ranchlife#grassfedbeef#cooking
♬ original sound - BastropCattleCo
Now the most downloaded app in the app store with 100 million active users in the U.S., TikTok is still a relatively new trend to about two-thirds of Americans. Around 17% of users who are already on the app are hesitant to post, but Mike Marone, from TikTok's global client services team, said the company wants to change that because the app is a platform for "authentic" personalities that lends itself to small businesses.
TikTok said part of the appeal of the app is that creators don't have to chase followers; the algorithm uses hashtag organization to connect users to what they want to see on their "For You Page" and vice versa, helping businesses to target audiences.
In fact, #SmallBusiness has more views than any other hashtag to date—44 billion and counting.
(TikTok)
Austin businesses are jumping on board since the app has risen to prominence: Austin Beerworks, Sunroom Rentals, the City of Austin and Texas Bee Works are all using TikTok to connect with the community.
With only 16 followers, Bastrop Cattle Co. said they've already gained between eight and 10 new repeat customers.
"We're a company of three people. That is everything, and the marketing and budget for most of our customers are word of mouth," Kruemcke said. "The results were way better than any other platform that we had attempted this sort of thing before."
TikTok isn't the only app to think outside the box and jump into the professional sphere—Austin-based Bumble launched a professional networking version of the app, modeled after the traditional swiping method, called Bumble Bizz in 2017. The spin-off now has several million active users.
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Popular
As summer temperatures continue to increase, so does Austin's "Party Island"—a hundreds-strong army of kayakers and paddle boarders who gather each weekend in the middle of Lady Bird Lake.
Born from the pandemic, the swarm of paddleboarding partiers has continued to grow each summer and can be seen from the nearby Lamar Boulevard Bridge. And while "Party Island" certainly lives up to one half of its name, it's not actually an island at all: instead, it's located at a shallow sandbar near Lou Neff Point.
With beers, burgers from portable grills and even DJ turntables in hand, more friends and strangers continue to beat the heat in new ways at the distinct Austin hangout.
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(Pexels)
If you are a committed, grunge-wearing resident of the Pacific Northwest, it is easy–almost automatic–to look at Texas as an extraordinarily dry, hot and culturally oppressive place that is better to avoid, especially in the summer. Our two granddaughters live with their parents in Portland.
Recently we decided to take the older girl, who is 15, to Dallas. Setting aside the summer heat, a Portlander can adjust to the vibes of Austin without effort. So let’s take Texas with all of its excesses straight up. Dallas, here we come.
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.