Anyone who has used TikTok for even a brief period of time can attest to how addictive it is. With over one billion monthly active users and people spending more than 850 minutes each month on the app, it’s just as powerful as any other “major” platform like Facebook and Instagram. Keep in mind that it took those platforms almost a decade to grow to such numbers, while TikTok achieved this in a few years.
Another feature that makes TikTok unique is that it is still young enough for your brand to jump on board early and take advantage of marketing and advertising opportunities, while being popular enough for you to immediately gain access to an audience.
If you’re planning a social media strategy for 2022 and beyond, you’ll be remiss to disregard TikTok.
Prior to joining TikTok, you need to take into account a few things regarding your business:
4 Signs your Brand Belongs on TikTok
- Your target market is between 16 and 30, or you want to increase brand awareness among young people.
- Your products can easily be showcased in a video. B2C products perform better on TikTok compared to B2B.
- You feel at ease sharing entertaining brand content. If you can humorously showcase the efficiency of your products in a video, TikTok is for you.
- You are open to new things and are willing to spend time experimenting with content on the platform.
Bottom-line: TikTok is not a “serious” platform. Businesses whose posts are entertaining, lighthearted, aesthetically pleasing, and follow popular trends tend to do well.
Setting up your TikTok Business Account
Creating a TikTok account is a simple process. You’re presented with several sign-up alternatives when you first launch the app.
Choose the option that best suits your needs, and then create a username, ideally your company’s name.
Give a brief description of your company in your bio, and include links to your website and other social media sites.
Now that you’ve created your account, it’s time to turn it into a business account to access additional services such as the ability to message your clients and access to a variety of sales features.
Follow the steps below to switch to a business account:
- Go to your account’s profile page.
- Select Settings and Privacy from the menu in the top right corner.
- Tap “Manage account” under account.
- Under Account Control, tap Switch to Business Account.
- Select a category that best reflects your account, such as Beauty & Fashion, Entertainment, Media, e.t.c.
How to make a TikTok Video
It’s easy to create TikTok videos. A phone, the app, and the motivation to build your brand will do; a large creative marketing team is not required.
When you open your feed, you’ll notice two categories at the top:
- Following: displays videos from people you’ve chosen to follow.
- For you: here you’ll find videos from creators you’ve possibly never heard of that TikTok is promoting.
The right-hand buttons show the number of likes, comments, and shares for a particular video.
The rotating record disk is the audio used in the video. Clicking on it will display the name, artist, popularity, and other videos using the audio.
To create a TikTok, go to the bottom of the page and press the + button. Before you begin, add a sound to ensure that the video and audio are in sync. You can use the timer function to record without holding down the record button. You can also import previously recorded videos from your device.
The Four Most Effective Content Types for Brand Success
Educational Content
This type of content is intended to be helpful. Share handy tips and hacks to assist your target audience in resolving common challenges. While you’re at it, make it entertaining by using humor.
You could, for example, make a funny video about a problem and then follow it up with an instructional video to demonstrate a solution. Another educational content concept is to offer advice and insights, positioning your brand as a thought leader.
User-Generated Content
This is content that users have created. Your fans will likely interact with your videos as your following grows. We recommend launching challenges, holding contests, or starting hashtag trends to maximize your probability of featuring in user-generated content.
The Coca-Cola company’s #spritechallengekenya campaign, which began in May 2022 and has already had over 10 million views, is a good example. User-generated content can help build brand trust, enhance engagement, and grow the number of followers.
Influencer-Created Content
You’ve probably seen influencer marketing in action on other social media sites. Influencers, for example, use Instagram to make posts that promote their sponsors directly. This type of content, however, does not work on TikTok. TikTok’s advertising is more organic, and eccentricity is highly rewarded.
Behind-the-scenes Content
Take your audience on a tour of the day-to-day operations that keep your business afloat. This is an excellent opportunity to engage with your audience as a person or a group of people rather than as a company.
Take advantage of this opportunity to answer your audience’s inquiries about your company.
Reasons Why Your Company Should Use TikTok
- Reach a Massive Audience
When you’re using a video-focused approach, you can tell your story in the most relatable way possible. Unlike other social media platforms, TikTok employs an algorithm that ensures that every creator has an equal chance of going viral regardless of popularity.
Platforms like Facebook show you the people that you follow on your feed. TikTok, on the other hand, prioritizes topics in which you’ve shown interest. This design allows every creator to reach a wider audience.
The wider your exposure, the better your chances of retaining customers, gaining new ones, and increasing overall brand awareness.
- Great User Engagement
The average TikTok user opens the app 8 times a day and spends around 52 minutes browsing it, compared to Facebook (33 mins) and Instagram (29 mins). This is an unrivaled opportunity for your brand to be discovered.
Almost half of the users say they make purchases from companies they see on the network. Create videos that evoke discussion, educate, or arouse emotion. This enables users to interact with your content through the Duet feature or react via the green screen feature.
The trending hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has almost 14 billion views, proving that TikTok marketing produces results.
The biggest opportunity for brands on TikTok, however, lies in creating content that their prospects typically search for. It was recently revealed that a lot of Gen Zers prefer searching on TikTok to Google. You can make some massive strides by adapting your SEO strategy for TikTok.
- TikTok Advertisements
TikTok has a phenomenal advertising platform, making it easy to find your next customer from its large and engaged user base.
With various ad formats for every brand’s needs:
TikTok’s Ad formats
Top view: These ads are arguably the best type. They are conspicuous and appear 5 seconds after a user opens the app. They last one minute, are full-screen, and have sound and autoplay turned on. Increase engagement by including internal and external links.
In-feed native ads: These are 9-15 second clips that appear in between videos on the ‘For You’ page. Because users can like, comment, share, and follow, you can include a variety of call-to-actions.
Hashtag challenges: These are promoted on the Discover page to increase awareness and engagement with branded hashtags. When a user clicks the hashtag, they are taken to a page that displays the sponsor’s logo, website, the challenge, and the most popular videos.
Brand takeovers: These allow brands to take over TikTok for a day and create images, GIFs, and videos that link to websites and promote challenges in an effort to increase brand awareness.
Branded effects: These are branded lenses that businesses can use to place in the foreground or background of videos. The lenses can include the brand logo or popular products from the brand.
- Endless Influencers
On TikTok, anyone can go viral. It’s not uncommon for a new creator to post a video that goes viral. This implies that the pool of influencers is infinite. 93% of marketers have used influencer marketing to increase sales or brand awareness.
Bonus tip: Finding the right creator with whom to collaborate is aided by a tool called the TikTok Creator Marketplace. The tool displays the influencers’ engagement, reach, demographics, and views, among other things.
- Grow other Social Channels
Videos from TikTok are simple to share on other social networks, particularly Instagram. TikTok provides a direct link to your Instagram account and the option to automatically share your video on Instagram as soon as you finish it.
- Budget Friendly
Many businesses are hesitant to spend money advertising on TikTok because they think it is difficult to keep track of data from yet another social media platform.
TikTok for business can be a huge success on any budget. Furthermore, when compared to other platforms, TikTok makes it easier for lesser-known brands to increase organic reach.
- Get Quick Results from Your Marketing Campaign
TikTok videos are ideal for capturing attention and providing users with information about your company in a short period of time because they are typically short.
Because videos are shared so quickly, you can get instant, fast results if you do so creatively.
Getting started on TikTok as a business can give your brand an advantage over your competition by making use of its wide reach.