TikTok has been one of the most talked-about social media apps of the last two years. It’s seen enormous growth in its popularity and has quickly risen to become one of the top video content platforms, offering users a way to create and share informative, funny, and interesting videos with people all over the world.
As TikTok’s popularity grows, many brands are contemplating how the platform is impacting culture and how users interact with brands online. Social media offers an excellent opportunity to businesses looking to gain brand awareness through building engagement, and TikTok offers a lot of potential in this area. The app is also changing all the time, with a slew of new TikTok developments coming out each week. In addition, TikTok is one of the most rapidly developing networks, with 800 million active users globally, putting it ahead of famous platforms like LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Social media networks have proven that they can increase sales when utilized correctly, and the buzz behind TikTok presents a chance for brands to reach a lot of people. In this article, let’s take a closer look at what Tiktok is exactly, and how businesses can use TikTok to their advantage.
What is TikTok?
TikTok, also known as Douyin in China, is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance. The social media platform is used to create a wide variety of short-form videos, ranging in length from fifteen seconds to three minutes, in genres such as dancing, humor, and education.
The randomness of TikTok is a big part of its charm. While users can follow preferred accounts, the majority of users spend their time on TikTok’s never-ending “For You” feed. This uses a clever algorithm to give a unique selection of video content to each user, partially based on their likes as well as current trends. The platform is built to be iterative, allowing users to “duet” or produce their own content in response to any video, resulting in a never-ending loop of memes and viral trends.
Ever since it first launched back in 2016, TikTok has gained a lot of traction. However, the last few years, in particular, have seen explosive growth in the popularity of the app in the US. The video-sharing app is now in use in over 150 countries and has been downloaded hundreds of millions of times. TikTok for business can significantly aid in the acquisition of new customers and clients for your brand or company in a similar way to other forms of social media marketing.
Lots of cultural trends have gained popularity on TikTok over the past few years, including cryptocurrency. Although cryptocurrencies were around long before TikTok existed, the app has helped to spread information about digital currencies to new demographics. As a result, the popularity of online payments made using crypto has increased a lot over the past few years, as researched by Scanteam.
While TikTok is associated with Gen Z, its popularity has increased across demographics, thanks in part to a year in which people were locked at home, looking for more things to watch or more time to create their own films. The app is expected to surpass 1.2 billion active users by the end of 2021.
How Brands Can Use TikTok to Build Brand Awareness
TikTok, like other forms of social media, can be used by businesses to generate brand awareness and well as drive sales from customers. Although the app has a significantly younger user base than many other social platforms, the demographics are starting to level out, with many older age groups also joining.
There are lots of different ways that businesses can make use of TikTok to develop a following and reach potential customers. Some of the main ways include:
Understanding How TikTok Works
Before developing a TikTok marketing strategy, it’s important to understand how the app works. Getting the right tone in marketing, especially for businesses that have already spent years in social media marketing on platforms like Instagram, can be difficult.
The app is split into two main areas, the For You page and the Following Page. For You shows trending content while the following page shows the latest content from users that you follow. The other thing to note about TikTok is that trends on the app change quickly, meaning any marketing strategy will need to be creative and on-trend. A lazy or repetitive content offering isn’t going to be effective.
Paid Advertising
Like most social media platforms, TikTok offers businesses the chance to pay for advertising space. This can be a very effective way of generating buzz around a brand, especially when first starting out as organic reach is difficult to achieve. The most common form of advertising on the site is through in-feed videos. These integrate video content into the “For You” stream of users.
Video adverts on the homepage last about 15 seconds and are full screen, including sound. Users can go from the ad to the URL landing page, meaning you can convert interested viewers into sales straight away. The number of clicks, impressions, CTR, video views, play length, and video interactions are all used to determine the video’s impact, with full data on likes, shares, and comments available.
User Interaction
User engagement and interaction with content are critically important in order to drive sales on TikTok. Content can encourage comments and suggestions or a TikTok hashtag challenge can be started, a popular type of content on the platform. When users create their own content based on the video, they promote the brand name and share their experience with other users. More than manufactured and perfect videos, TikTok success is dependent on original, honest, and relatable material.
In contrast to Instagram, TikTok trends can change and evolve on a daily basis. So, in addition to designing highly valued, strategic, and detailed campaigns with influencers, leveraging emerging trends is important to kick off a campaign. In addition, brands should strive to adapt quickly to keep ahead of current trends.
This could include improvising a piece of music or sound that looks to be trendy at the last minute or piggybacking on a popular dance challenge. Maintain a pulse on what’s happening in TikTok and be ready and willing to adjust.
Hashtag Challenges
Hashtag challenges are an important aspect of the TikTok platform and community. These are usually short dances or actions performed in response to a certain sound, such as a popular song. People from all over the world utilize hashtag challenges to get ideas for their own TikTok video for business.
There are loads of challenges available to take on at any given time, which are all about having fun and creating interesting content. Many TikTok hashtag challenges involve branded hashtags, and anyone taking part in the challenge will effectively be spreading a hashtag and helping to bring awareness to the brand.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing on TikTok works in a similar way to how it does on Instagram and other social platforms. Through establishing a partnership with an influencer, brands can gain more attention to their product or service and generate leads and sales. Working with influencers who’s following fit the target demographic is the key to success on TikTok, as it is with all social media for business.
As a result, to be successful with influencer marketing (or any other form of marketing) on TikTok, a brand must appeal to the right demographic. So, brands need to think carefully about whether their target market is using TikTok and if it would make sense to invest in TikTok influencer marketing. For example, brands selling cosmetics have done very well with TikTok influencer marketing, while a power tool company might not have the same level of success.
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