Is your brand active on most social media platforms, but you’re not sure whether you should invest in a TikTok strategy, too? You’ve come to the right place.
The short-form video app sprung to life around 2017, but rose to massive popularity at the start of the pandemic in 2020. It currently has 689 million active users and this number is expected to surpass 1.2 billion in 2021.
TikTok is not going anywhere anytime soon, so let’s get into the best brand strategies to harness engagement and community on TikTok.
Why Invest in TikTok Marketing
Brands have to be alert to a myriad of new trends popping up every day. Is TikTok worth investing time, energy, and resources into? With a growing user base and consistent trends for brands to hop on, we say yes.
TikTok Helps Build Compelling, Bite-Sized Content
According to recent social media statistics, users love TikTok for its short, 15-second videos. Jumping on the TikTok train would mean the opportunity to start building more creative content to increase brand awareness in a quick, easy-to-consume format.
Adapting your brand to the TikTok style could broaden your user base, especially to younger audiences with shorter attention spans. And two, it could also help you carve out a more defined and interesting brand voice.
Start by looking at your existing content and brainstorming how you can redesign it to match the TikTok style. This might look like:
- Educational videos (product tutorials, how-to videos, recipes, etc.)
- Funny skits
- Inspirational videos on how to use your product or service
- Trend-based videos (dances, hashtag challenges, etc.)
- Video commentaries
Jolyn clothing’s team nails hashtag challenges by participating in trends like the viral “Blinding Lights” dance while featuring their apparel.
TikTok Helps you Reach Millennials and Gen Z
It’s widely known that TikTok is most popular among Gen Z and millennials. If your product or service hopes to target these audiences, then you should try your luck on TikTok. These groups, especially Gen Z, have different expectations from brands than the generations before them. They are looking for more authenticity, purpose, and transparency. How can you meet these expectations on TikTok while being entertaining at the same time?
Here are a few tips:
- Stop being salesy. Don’t try to sell them on something in every video.
- Add some personality. Use employees in your videos or skits.
- Adapt to the platform. Use popular TikTok hashtags, filters, stickers, emojis, and language.
- Experiment with different video formats. Either keep your videos simple to maintain authenticity or go all out and hyper-optimize for engagement by resharing user videos, participating in TikTok challenges, or even putting together captivating social videos.
Check out some brands like Redbull and Alo Yoga on TikTok; these teams capture the attention of younger audiences by following the trends and style of the platform and maintaining a brand element while not appearing salesy.
Achieve Higher Engagement with Your Content
TikTok is the type of app that can keep up with its audience’s short attention span and capture them for more than 858 minutes per month. So, how can you get a share of these engagement numbers for your own brand?
- Do your research. Look into not only what works on TikTok but also what your audience would like to see. Ask questions and look for feedback opportunities across your social channels.
- Post shareable/repurposable content. Content that performs the best on TikTok are ones that are easy to copy or imitate.
- Add calls-to-action (CTAs). Assuming that your followers will react to your content is not enough. Outright ask them to comment their response to a question, tag a friend, reply with a video, or otherwise engage with your post.
- Use links. Product-based brands have seen outstanding success on TikTok. Nearly half of TikTok users have bought stuff that they saw on the platform. Combining ecommerce with social media is your key to unlocking sales from more potential customers.
TikTok is Full of User-Generated Content (UGC)
High-quality UGC is all the rage today among brands. Using content created by your community of passionate customers helps you appear more authentic, personable, and caring. Not to mention, it can save you on your content generation time, effort, and spend.
64% of Millennials recommend a product or service on social media at least once a month. This means there are probably already TikTok users featuring your brand in their posts. If not, there is ample opportunity on the platform for you to ask them to start! Consider running a social media contest on TikTok; people who already like your brand will often tag your handle in their videos simply for the chance to have their content featured on your brand’s profile.
Brands can also streamline the UGC collection and publication process with a CRM platform like Pixlee’s that automatically pulls in content mentioning your brand or tags of your choice. Not only does Pixlee allow brands to collect TikToks from their favorite creators and reshare them, but they can also be republished on-site and on other marketing channels.
Puma uses Pixlee to create a gallery of TikTok videos from its own influencers on the brand’s website.
The Algorithm Works in Your Favor
TikTok is a platform with a newcomer-friendly algorithm. What does this mean? Take the For You page as an example. It consists of videos from creators that the user is not following. The posts that appear on this feed depend on a few things, including the user’s topic preferences, location, and the videos’ engagement metrics.
So, even if you had five followers on TikTok, you could still go viral with a really good, engaging video. Here’s a guide if you want to learn more about becoming TikTok famous.
TikTok isn’t Oversaturated with Brands… Yet
According to Social Media Examiner, only 5% of marketers use TikTok. So, it’s not as saturated with brands as Facebook or Instagram. TikTok for Business itself has only launched in June 2020. We can say that TikTok’s playing field is still in its early adopter phase.
But it won’t be that way forever.
Your best bet is to sign up for TikTok now and start exploring the platform. It can easily become an integral part of your social media arsenal. Therefore, it’s best to get involved early and reap the results before your competitors do. Check out our guide on how to advertise on TikTok for more.
Mark Quadros is a SaaS content marketer that helps brands create and distribute rad content. On a similar note, Mark loves content and contributes to several authoritative blogs like HubSpot, CoSchedule, Foundr, etc. Connect with him via LinkedIn or Twitter.
