As the newest popular social media platform, TikTok is experiencing rapid growth. The platform now holds 800 million monthly active users and an average daily view time of 52 minutes, creating an opening to an almost untapped market for creative and fast-thinking brands¹.
Brands such as the NFL, Fenty Beauty, and Chipotle have recently leveraged the new social media platform and have quickly reached high engagement as a result, often with a very minimal investment in ads².
The advantage of using TikTok for business and content marketing versus other popular social media channels is that brands don’t need a large audience to engage new users to your company’s site, build brand recognition, or tap into a new audience. The app’s algorithm makes it possible to land thousands of viewers based on the quality and strategy behind your content.
Here are three ways to promote your brand’s content marketing on TikTok.
Dive Into the Trend Culture
Simplicity is key to making TikTok content that will gain millions of views. While creativity is impossible to overestimate in any content creation, going viral on TikTok requires videos to be easily replicated by users or offers a twist.
If you need some ideas on how to create a simple, yet effective TikTok video for your brand, take a look at the discover page, pick three areas your brand may fit into, and watch a few videos to catch trending themes. From there, think of ways your brand can connect to that trend.
Another alternative to picking an already trending video is to catch an early wave of trending music. TikTok has an entire department dedicated to finding songs that are likely to trend in pop culture. Doing a bit of research on fast-rising songs on popular music platforms such as SoundCloud and Youtube can give you an early start to creating a widely adopted video. The same goes for trending movie scripts and filters. Research trending shows on Netflix and Hulu, filter through them to match your target audience, and use the soundbite to create your video, getting a jumpstart on an upcoming trend.
Use the TikTok Algorithm to Your Advantage
TikTok allows millions of people to watch content regardless of how many followers you have. Its algorithm takes into account the number of interactions on each individual video to determine what others should view.
TikTok’s views are grown exponentially according to the initial reaction of a small group. When a video is first published, it is distributed through the ‘For You page’ in a to a smaller group of people based on their geolocation.
If these users receive the content well, then the video is distributed to a larger audience. The reception of your content is measured by several factors: The number of replays, video completions, shares, comments, and likes are all strong indicators to the TikTok algorithm that your content is worthy of sharing.
In light of this, tracking where the largest percentage of your audience is based, using analytics from other social platforms such as Instagram and Facebook can prove helpful in implementing the TikTok algorithm to your advantage. Once you know where most of your audience is located, have someone on your team post content from the location. This increases the likelihood your video will be interacted with by the initial group of viewers since it will first be distributed by a pool of users in the geolocation who more likely fit your target audience demographics and are therefore more likely to engage with the content.
Tiktok Advertising
Brands using TikTok advertising have seen a high return on investment in the way of attracting more users brought to its social media page. The apparel company, Levi’s was among the first retailers to use TikTok’s “Shop Now” button, which allows consumers to make purchases directly through the social media platform. The company reportedly doubled its number of viewers for every product advertised on the platform³.
Additionally, Levi’s partnered with influencers such as Callen Schaub, Cosette Rinab, Gabby Morrison, and Everett Williams, who used Levis’s laser-powered Future Finish 3-D denim customization technology to create their own customized denim. The viewers then had the option to buy the same design on Levi.com up until the experiment wrapped. According to TechCrunch, the result was that product views to Levi.com’s “Future Finish” pages more than doubled for every product included in the partnerships.
This proves that a mixture of creativity, influencer marketing, and personalized content works well with TikTok’s advertising feature. Combine that with engaging videos and content, and your brand can grow quickly on the new social platform while attracting new customers.
TikTok’s innovative algorithm and lack of brand saturation offer an excellent channel through which to promote your business. Using a couple of basic marketing tactics, combined with creative easily replicable, and on-trend content can lead to impressive growth in the number of viewers. If you are searching for new channels through which to market, we highly recommend putting your creative caps on having some fun diving into TikTok for your marketing and communications.
Want to learn more about how to market your business on Instagram?
Sources:
¹https://wallaroomedia.com/blog/social-media/tiktok-statistics/
²https://later.com/blog/brands-on-tiktok/
³https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/20/levis-partnered-with-tiktok-on-social-commerce-and-doubled-its-product-views/