Syd and Olivia (@sydandolivia): Creator Coffee Chat

Welcome to our Creator Coffee Chat: Presented By the TrendTok App where you get to learn about the very best tips, tricks and advice for growing your TikTok account from viral creators! We know that growing your TikTok account can feel overwhelming at times, so we’re breaking down the strategy that these creators used to help you through the process! Whether you’re a new creator on the platform that hasn’t chosen their username yet or a creator with a huge following behind you, we believe that this series will provide you with some new insights that you can apply to your TikTok strategy!

Today’s coffee chat is with Syd and Olivia (@sydandolivia). Syd and Olivia are a Los Angeles-based comedy writing/performing duo, and have also been best friends for ten years. They met in high school on an improv team, and then both went to UCLA where we started absurdist fast-paced comedy sketches and sold two narrative shows, Apocalypse Goals and Stir Crazy, to Snapchat. They've been on TikTok for almost a year now.

They first got into TikTok by posting some of their existing sketches to see if anything would hit, and one sketch about birth control side effects went viral. After that point, they started writing “facetime-style” sketches based on absurdist versions of things they were going through in real life.

We asked Syd and Olivia to share some advice, tips and thoughts with us that could help creators with their TikTok journey!

What is your TikTok handle and did you have a strategy behind choosing your handle username?

We started being “Syd and Olivia” on TikTok because it was the most “to the point” name. We used to call ourselves “Barely Legal Comedy”, a name we picked when we were 18 and 19, but now we’re super legal so the name didn’t make sense anymore. Plus “Syd and Olivia” is just way more memorable and direct.

How did you decide what kind of content you wanted to post on your platform or what audience you wanted to reach?

Absurdist, fast-paced comedy is our favorite thing to make, and we hoped to reach people around our age group going through the same things we’re going through (or at least who thinks the stuff is funny).

What happens when one of your videos does not perform how you expected? Do you ever recreate or repost the video?

Honestly, just keep going. Persistence is everything. Take a moment to feel butt-hurt or whatever, but keep going.

What advice do you have for creators on creating the TikTok videos? Any there any tools or softwares that you use?

Everything depends on the type of video you’re trying to make!! We make really fast-paced back and forth sketches where we talk over each other, which would be impossible to edit in-app, so we use Premiere. We also use Kapwing to caption our sketches.

How do you keep your community/followers engaged with you and your content on TikTok?

Our favorite way to keep our community engaged is by going on TikTok Live every time we post a new Tiktok. We usually promote the latest sketch, but then also just shout compliments at people and ask how everyone is. If there are any weird jokes or bits that happen during the live, we ask people to comment those inside jokes on our TikToks just because it’s fun for all of us.

How do you handle the negative comments on the platform?

When you see negative comments, you have to remember that everyone spewing hate is either super young or going through something. Also sometimes people write things without realizing how it’ll affect someone, so it’s really important to learn how to block stuff out. Also, the silver lining is... arguments in the comments boost the video in the algorithm. So if you have someone doing their whole “women aren’t funny” thing in the comments, don’t take it super seriously and delete the comment, just sit back, wait for the argument to happen, and move on to making your next piece of content.

Where can our readers connect with you?

Our handle on everything is @sydandolivia, and you can also check out SydAndOlivia.com !

We loved chatting with Syd and Olivia and if you enjoyed their coffee chat, make sure that you check them out on TikTok! And drop a comment on their latest video that you saw them here on the TrendTok Coffee Chat series!!

This series is presented by the TrendTok App, the platform for TikTok Analytics that helps creators go viral! Check it out here!