TikTok for Your Business: Grow your business using Social Media

We’re sure you’ve heard about TikTok. You might have even seen some of your friends in social media posting a video or two about their impressive TikTok performances. The quarantine brought about by the COVID crisis led to the spike of TikTok downloads. In March alone, there has been a total of around 112.9 million downloads. People try to entertain themselves while staying at home, and TikTok is the way to do it.

With these figures at hand, TikTok made itself a viable platform for businesses to extend their marketing prowess. But TikTok is not like any other social media platform’s; thus, a different approach must be explored. Most businesses focus on IG or Facebook, like our Local NYC Instagram account, but the focus needs to shift as new platforms emerge!

TikTok for Your Business

How are you going to do it? Here are four ways to make your business succeed on TikTok.

Create Your TikTok Content

Do some market research about TikTok’s audience, and if your targets are there, then it’s time to get your business its TikTok account, too. TikTok can be useful even if your brand is not yet well-known. You can start by having a marketing plan, keep best practices in mind and execute it.

First, you have to be authentic. TikTok users are on the platform for some fun. They don’t care about grand camera equipment, or neither do they have big production budgets.

Let yourself loose and create content using their language. Being authentic will help you humanize your brand and turn it into something they can relate to.

Second, try to check if you can make content using pets and children – these are two magic ingredients that can make your content go viral. Remember, TikTok’s demographic is mostly from younger audiences.

If you have a mascot brand ambassador, then it’s time to make use of it. You can even ask a team member’s cute kid to do some dance for your business.

Third, recreate current TikTok content. If there are some hashtag challenges, you can take part in then grab the opportunity. Jump into the bandwagon when there are trending dances and songs.

If the trend is something related to your niche, later try to recreate the content and inject your brand in a fun and entertaining way. Sometimes you can check the trend, add your spin on it and viola – a successful content.

Encourage User-Generated Content (UGC)

Remember that TikTok is a fun, playful and entertaining platform. Since people are used to generating content in this platform, then why not make the best out of it?

Nike was successful in harnessing this potential. Instead of posting a public video, they are making use of UGC. If you use the #nike, you can see that there are around 929 million users that viewed the hashtag and a million who had posts that include it.

Now, that’s marketing magic! If you try to check it out, you can see people posting their content – from users wearing their Nike to painting their Nike or dancing in their Nike – making it authentic and something that truly speaks to the audience you want to reach out to. And the best part? This UGC is like free advertising for the brand.

Advertise on TikTok

Should you wish just to play it out, these are four ways that you can do so:

Brand takeovers. These ads are exclusive to different categories, and they appear in the user’s feed before they can see other content. You are also allowed to link your landing page in it.
Native ads. These can last for 9 to 15 seconds long and play between user content. The user can skip this ad though.
Sponsored hashtag challenges. Your business can sponsor a hashtag challenge. There will be a banner that will appear in the
Discover Page. When users click on it, they will be directed to your content on how the challenge works. Hashtag challenges are quite popular on TikTok, so this will be a good try.
Brand Lenses. You can create your TikTok filter, and users can select it when choosing a filter. It can live for ten days.

Tap Influencers

Yes, just like any other social media platform, TikTok has influencers, too. There are varying degrees when it comes to the influencer’s reach, but we all know a general rule: the more followers, the more influence.

You have to choose your influencer carefully. It’s important to make sure they are the perfect fit for your brand. TikTok influencers can talk about your product in one of their videos, post about it in the video description or link your brand to the description.

You can ask for their media kit and pricing so you know what content they can do for your brand. During the negotiation, make sure it will be a win-win situation for both parties.