Once a month, spend fifteen minutes searching your category on TikTok, note which kinds of video keep coming back, and make your own version for the channel you already use. You never have to post a single video on TikTok to do it.
Here is the habit, what to write down, and how to borrow an idea without borrowing anyone's look.
Read it, even if you never post to it
Posting on TikTok and reading TikTok are two different jobs. TikTok is built on short video made by ordinary people, which makes it a quick place to see what people enjoy watching right now. You can take that home to Instagram.
A florist who decided TikTok was not for the shop still opens it once a month, the way you walk past other shop windows on the high street to see what they are doing.
Fifteen minutes, once a month
Put it in the diary for the same morning each month. Search your category the way a customer would, the same search you would do to decide whether to join, and scroll the top results for fifteen minutes.
Write down the kind of video, not the video itself: a morning routine, an unboxing, a before and after, packing an order, a close-up of the making. A ceramics studio searching "handmade mugs" notes that several of the top videos are the first coffee of the day in a new mug. Next month it checks whether that kind is still there. The kinds that come back month after month are the ones worth making.
Look one aisle over
Search a neighbouring category as well as your own. What is moving in fashion tells you something about beauty. What is moving in food tells you something about homeware. Your customers do not keep their tastes in separate boxes.
A skincare shop that sees "get ready with me" videos everywhere in hair care has found a kind of video its own customers already know how to watch.
Borrow the kind of video, never the look
A kind of video belongs to everyone. The look belongs to the person who made it: their light, their music, their edit, their way of speaking. Take the first and leave the second.
A home-fragrance brand spots slow-Sunday routines coming back month after month. It films its own on a phone: its own window, its own linen, the kettle, the match, the candle catching, in its own colours and its own words. Nobody would mistake it for the videos that gave it the idea, and it sits comfortably in the rest of the feed.
Other people's videos tell you what to film. Your own shop tells you how.
Post it where you already are
Your version goes where your customers already follow you, which for most small brands is Instagram, as a reel. Reels are the format that gets you found, and this is the kind of video they suit.
One borrowed kind a month is plenty. When one works, film it again next month with a different product, and it becomes a format you repeat. A bakery that tried "the first loaf out of the oven" once now posts it every Saturday.
What CP3® does here
Market Trends shows what your audience is searching for, scored for fit with your brand and refreshed every month, so you know which subject to film. The fifteen minutes on TikTok tell you which kind of video to film it as. Branded Content drafts the reel onto your calendar with a visual direction, a caption direction and a date. CP3® does not make video, so the filming stays with you, and so does the monthly scroll.