ASK ALEX

“Everyone on TikTok seems to just talk now. Should I be ‘yapping’ too?”

We have all heard the term ‘yapping’. It tends to mean talking too much or going on a bit.

But on TikTok and Instagram, yapping has become a content format in its own right.

Creators sit in the car, or in their kitchen, and just talk to the camera. No script, no trending audio, no jump cut every two seconds. One creator, Jessi Jean, went from zero to hundreds of thousands of followers and a $1.2m launch inside a year doing exactly this, and now teaches “the art of a damn good yap” to thousands.

So yes, pay attention to this one. We’ve had a couple of years of AI-generated captions and the same Reels templates on every clinic feed, and audiences are tired. A person talking, with actual opinions and the odd tangent, can’t be faked.

YOU ALREADY YAP FOR A LIVING

Think about your consultations and your inboxes. You explain how PDRNs work. You talk someone down from a treatment that’s wrong for them. The list goes on.

That is the content. A yap is basically a consultation with the camera, minus the patient. It’s also the easiest credibility-builder I know. When someone watches you answer a question fluently, off the cuff, sitting in your own clinic, they don’t need convincing that you know your stuff. They’ve just watched you know it. A certificate wall can’t do that.

THE FIRST THREE SECONDS

Jessi’s biggest lesson: the hook makes or breaks the video, and it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

Don’t open with “Hi everyone, today I want to talk about…”. By the time you’ve finished that sentence, they’ve gone.

Open mid-thought, like you’re already deep in conversation.

“Three patients asked me this exact question this week.” “I’m going to say something unpopular about skin boosters.” “If your practitioner says yes to everything, run.”

And say it like you mean it. Read that last one out loud, flat. Now read it like you’re letting a friend in on something. Completely different video.

DELIVERY IS THE WHOLE GAME

Cadence, tone, presence. The same words land completely differently from different people, and the version of you that works on camera is the one your favourite patients get. Be warm, direct, bring some sass if that’s who you are. Delivery can be the difference between a scroll, stop or a save.

Talk to one person. Picture your nicest regular sitting across from you, not an audience. Speed up through the setup, slow right down when you get to the bit that matters. And if you fumble a sentence, try leaving it in. The odd stumble or laugh could make you believable. Or you can trim everything nicely but don’t go too wild with this . Too much editing and your content can end up looking like a bad TikTok ad.

PICK YOUR SPOT AND KEEP IT

You don’t need a studio. The best setup is a phone, a window and a mic. Some go for clip-ons, visually I love the mini mic but held in the hand. Yours should be just as simple, but consistent.

Choose one or two familiar settings and stick to them. Your treatment chair with the clinic behind you.

Or the car after clinic, which has become a genre of its own and is weirdly intimate.

After a handful of videos, people recognise where they are before you’ve said a word, and they feel like they’ve visited your clinic before they’ve ever booked. That’s branding you can’t buy.

DON’T YAP TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN

Unscripted doesn’t mean unguarded. ASA rules don’t relax because you’re rambling. You can’t promote POMs, so talk about consultations and concerns rather than “come get your Botox”. Strip patient stories of anything identifying, too. “Patients often tell me…” keeps you safe.

If anything, yapping makes compliance easier than trend content does. You’re educating in your own words, with full control of the message. Nobody’s miming to an audio about injectables.

REPS ARE KEY

The advice I’d steal most from the yapping crowd: nothing improves your content like volume.

Your first few will be awkward. By video 10 you’ll have found your rhythm, and you’ll have a pile of clips and transcripts to chop into posts, blog content and newsletter material while you’re at it.

Commit to a small run on TikTok, or Meta Reels. Start this week, while it’s the summer and maybe a little less stressful. 10 yaps in a month, one question per video, same chair or same car, hook first, talk like you talk. In a feed full of polished sameness, the clinic that sounds like an actual person stands out a mile.

Go on. Yap.

ALEX BUGG

Alex Bugg works for Web Marketing Clinic, a family-run digital agency, which specialises in medical aesthetics. The business builds websites and delivers marketing campaigns for doctors, nurses, dentists, distributors and brands. Contact her at: alex@webmarketingclinic.co.uk or follow her on Instagram: @webmarketingclinic