Data suggests that more than half of the world now uses social media. In fact, it’s hard to find the silver lining with all the doom-and-gloom studies stating how social media negatively affects your mental health.
But did you know that social media can — at the same time — be used to do good in the world?
Joining forces with her girlfriend, content creator Taz Zammit harnessed the power of popular online platforms to benefit the LGBTQIA+ community and become a successful business owner.
We came across Taz on LinkedIn, where she mentioned how Clockify helped her track 508 hours — that’s not a typo — of creating, editing, and brainstorming.
So, we reached out to her to discuss:
- How to turn your regular social media presence into a business,
- What platform to use as a content creator,
- How Clockify helps Taz stay on point every day, and more!
Without further ado, let’s dig in!
Table of Contents
How Taz turned her ‘hobby’ into a business
If her interests can be put in a nutshell, Taz Zammit is a social media influencer and company founder based in Australia. She is 28 years old and likes to describe herself as a driven and creative person.
“Content is probably my biggest creative outlet. And I love putting my analytical hat on for more of the business side of things.”
Today, Taz and her girlfriend Alessia run a successful TikTok account and their business called TANDA VENTURES — TANDA stands for Taz and Alessia. It’s a company that creates a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community through live events and in-app experiences.
“We weren’t even doing this as a hobby. It was literally just posting on social media — we definitely didn’t view it as a business. Until we hit 100,000 followers — then we started getting emails from global brands. We were shocked. This is our full-time job together, and we have over 580,000 followers on TikTok.”
Taz says she and her girlfriend have been lucky on the social media platform in many ways.
“The community is very supportive — even when our videos come up on random people’s pages that have never seen us before. We usually don’t get that much hate.”
Curiously, Taz strives to create a different image of gay couples than what we usually see in the movies and on TV generally.
“We want people to see that two girls can be together and that’s totally normal. I think just by us posting our daily life, it achieves that without us having to say anything.”
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
Here’s another inspiring story about skyrocketing your video content and social media following:
Picking out a platform: TikTok vs. Instagram
Next, we pick Taz’s brain to learn more about why she settled for TikTok in a sea of social media platforms.
“I love TikTok because of the discoverability. [We started the account and] no one knew who we were [at first]. But TikTok shows you people who have similar interests. So, it’s a great way to be discovered.”
Although Taz uses Instagram too, she believes the tide is turning in favor of TikTok. One advantage of TikTok, according to Taz, is that it’s more innovative than Instagram. In any case, Taz and her business continue to use a few outlets.
“We still post on all platforms: Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest. But I would definitely say TikTok is our major platform, based on the views as well. Last month we achieved over 14,000,000 views, and 13,000,000 came from TikTok.”
Along similar lines, Taz brings home the point of why TikTok is better for creators.
“The great thing about [TikTok] is your content lives on. When we post on Instagram, [the content] kind of gets lost after a few days. People aren’t able to view it. But with TikTok, people are liking our videos from when we first started 2 years ago.”
Tips to skyrocket success on TikTok
Now, Taz shares a few useful tips and tricks for maintaining a successful TikTok account.
“The #1 is consistency. And I know that sounds so basic, but it’s the thing that I would say contributed most to our following — just us showing up every day and posting.”
Apart from that, Taz believes that interacting with your community can do wonders.
“Getting in the chat and communicating with the people that are engaging in your comments section [is important]. If you’re brave enough to go live, live streaming really changed the game for us.”
Another benefit of live streaming includes sharing unique experiences and life moments. All this seems to be vastly contributing to their success online. In fact, Taz feels her everyday wins would be capped if it weren’t for the live engagement.
“Live streams take you into our house and into emotional times in our life. We’ve cried on the live streams and shared lots of stories there that just wouldn’t work in a [regular] video on TikTok. If you’re brave enough and courageous, get on a live stream.”
Yet, some people feel scared when they want to start their TikTok accounts or launch any social media endeavor for that matter. So, Taz shares a magic bullet.
“It’s not about being perfect, having a script, or looking a certain way. It’s just about being you. I would encourage you to start small. Start creating a piece of content a week, and then once you feel confident, you can ramp it up a little bit more too.“
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
Need to create a steady stream of content? Get our guide on making effective plans:
How did Taz discover Clockify?
At first, Taz’s former company started using Excel sheets to track everyone’s availability and work sessions. But, it turned into a headache quickly.
“People would forget [about it], and it was just very complicated with the time zones too.”
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
To learn about other ways time zones mess with your productivity, read our article:
When Taz’s former boss asked her to compare time management apps, she did her research and settled on Clockify. So, we were eager to learn why.
“My boss was flexible with when we could work and allowed us a lot of freedom in choosing what we worked on, which was fantastic. But the problem with that was he just never knew what everyone was working on. The work was getting done, but he didn’t know when he could collaborate with us or when we would be online.”
Next, we turn our eyes to how else Clockify helps Taz stay successful day in and day out.
Clockify features Taz enjoys the most
In this section, we explore in detail how Taz uses Clockify to reimagine her daily routine. Apart from becoming a master of her time, Clockify lets her find the space for what truly matters every day — whether it be exercise or work.
Feature #1: Project scheduling
Taz’s greatest realization of how Clockify could make a difference came fast — the app allowed her ex-company staff to become more of a connected team in the long run.
“We moved into using Clockify for just when everyone was online — just hit the button, write in what you’re working on, just so that the people in the business can see. Instead of us all doing individual tasks, we knew when people were online and things like that.”
More importantly, Taz and her former team were able to forecast projects for the week ahead. With Clockify project scheduling, they could get a bird’s-eye view of the current tasks. In turn, this overall picture allowed them to project what to focus on for the upcoming period.
“So, it was really easy for my boss to just go in there and check what everyone’s doing. [Clockify] is a massive help when you are working with people in different places.”
Today, as part of her business, Taz praises Clockify because it lets her see if time is slipping through the cracks.
“Some weeks and months I notice that my time is going more to working on brand deals and emails. And that’s okay every now and then. But if it was every month, that would be a problem. So, it’s good to have that and just check yourself to make sure you’re on track.”
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
If you want to stay on track and avoid wasting time, check out our guide on this topic:
Feature #2: Tags and categories
Taz appreciates that Clockify allows her to go as detailed as she wants with regard to her most daunting objectives. But her favorite is probably the feature to label projects and tasks.
“I use tags to specify what goals I’m working towards. So, we set 3 major goals every year, and I’ve got those 3 goals in tags. [For] every task I work on, I’m always thinking: ‘How does this relate to our major goals of the year?’ And if it relates to 1, I’ll tick 1, but sometimes it’s all 3.”
The powerful feature to tag and categorize entries lets Taz and her team become more intentional about how they spend their work time. But she puts it so much better — with emphasis on being mindful.
“If I find I’m working on things that don’t relate to the goals, I’m super aware of that while I’m doing the task. I won’t spend too long on it. So, it’s very helpful.”
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
Tracking goals is probably the single most important thing in any career. Track your goals with the free goal tracker app below:
In Clockify, you can use 4 levels by which to analyze and categorize time entries:
- Descriptions,
- Tasks,
- Projects, and
- Clients.
But every step of the way, you can go even further and use tags that work regardless of the 4-level hierarchy above. In other words, Clockify lets you customize and tinker with your entire workload.
Feature #3: Time tracker
Before she came across Clockify, Taz didn’t take tracking productivity seriously.
“I love to track my workouts. I track when I do intermittent fasting. [Also] I track a lot of different things in my life, but never did I track my productivity and my workload.”
Today, however, Taz uses Clockify to up her time-tracking game in every aspect of her work life.
“Since [we started] using it, I’m way more productive. We were able to achieve all of our financial goals last year. I think a big part of that is just being able to focus. You can implement [time-tracking] for different things, but for a work sense, it’s just so beneficial. It’s almost silly not to track it because then you don’t know what you’re working on.”
Apart from that, Taz is a sports enthusiast — so she also uses Clockify for this purpose.
“I have some personal goals this year, like running a marathon. And I was wondering, what if I track every run I go on and things like that.”
In fact, Taz agrees that people can track their time in Clockify for pretty much anything and everything.
Simply put, you select a project, mark it as billable or non-billable, and press the start button. Finally, Clockify lets you manually create time entries after the fact.
Feature #4: Dashboard
Clockify’s time tracker works best when paired with the dashboard. On the dashboard, users get a clear snapshot of where they spend their time. This view helps people choose the day, week, month, or year they want to explore.
Of course, it’s all neatly presented with metrics and charts like:
- Percentages,
- Hours,
- Projects,
- Billability, and others.
Who would Taz recommend Clockify to and why?
We saw Taz’s post praising Clockify on the social media network for professionals — LinkedIn. Above all, it was interesting to us how she collected all her data, amounting to 1,347 hours tracked in total over a year — that’s Clockify in action!
Taz thinks that people in her niche would benefit from using Clockify.
“I’m a creator, so I would recommend it to social media creators, but it really could be for any industry because you can track anything. Creators often get caught in that scroll. So you think you’re working, but you’re actually just watching TikToks.”
In contrast, Clockify lets all its users snap out of it and laser focus on what truly matters. In her own words, Taz has seen a profound difference in where and how she spends her energy and time bit by bit.
💡 Clockify Pro Tip
Read other stories about how creators organize their days with time tracking — right here:
Wrapping up: Be yourself in the social media business and track your progress
Millions of videos are posted on social media sites and other platforms every single day. As a result, the content creation business is booming and becoming increasingly competitive. Today, people need to invest plenty of time and effort to stand out from the crowd.
It looks like Taz and Alessia have found a recipe for success to help them on this journey. So, let’s look at a few nuggets of wisdom that Taz shared with us in this insightful interview:
- Find the social platform that works for you and lets you grow your business,
- Get your content out there ASAP if you want to succeed,
- Avoid overthinking about the content — better done than perfect,
- Measure and track your personal and professional hours every day, and
- Show a vulnerable side of yourself instead of only your greatest qualities.
In the end, Taz said it best.
“Our space is that positive light where people can come and feel.”
So, let’s create an environment where people can come together and feel good about themselves!
