At first glance, TikTok might not seem like a place that caters to everyone. However, anyone over the age of 13 can join the popular app and use it as a powerful means to connect with friends, celebrities and users from all across the globe.
TikTok is a mobile-based video sharing application that lets users create short videos or “edits” using their cell phone camera. The app comes in handy when you need an activity that lasts less than 3 minutes. In this blog post, we’ll explain everything you need to know about TikTok: its functions, how it works, who it’s for, and how TikTok marketing may be able to help your business. Keep reading to discover everything you need to know including how to reach your target audience on one of the latest social media platforms!
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a video-sharing application that lets users create short videos or “edits” using their cell phone camera. There are also tools available for creating TikTok-exclusive videos. TikTok videos are automatically published to your account 24/7 and are accessible to the public. The app is available on Android and iOS devices, and can be downloaded for free by visiting the App Store or Play Store. The app is available in over 200 countries and has more than 200 million users.
The app has been compared to it’s similar predecessor such as vine – which was discontinued in 2016 shortly before TikToks rise to popularity.
TikTok users are able to share original content, duet content of other content creators and even promote businesses and brands.
How do you use TikTok?
Once you download the app, you can create and post a new video by tapping the camera icon at the top of your screen. You can then record a video, stop recording, edit the video frame by frame, add music, filters, and stickers to create your video. Once you’re done recording, you can post your video to your account or use a timer to create a “timeline” style video. You can also edit or delete your videos anytime from your account page.
For businesses TikTok can be slightly trickier, unfortunately due to copyright issues brands are unable to use latest released music or ‘trending sounds’ on the social platform. However, businesses are able to use user-generated sounds and stock tracks as background music for their authentic content.
What Are TikTok Ads?
Similarly to other social media channels, TikTok has the ability to publish paid advertisements (PPC) in the form of video content. Just as Facebook and Instagram ads have the ability to monitor your budget and target your key demographic TikToks ad facilities also follow suit. You’ll be able to target your viral content towards your customers and filter by gender, location, age, interests and other varying factors that might apply to your product or service.
The Different Types Of Ads on TikTok
In Feed Ads
The most commonly used TikTok ad is what’s known as the ‘In-Feed Ads’. These are the videos that will appear on your customers ‘FYP’ or ‘For You Page’. These videos can be customised with CTA’s encouraging users to engage with your brand by following a link to your website, or downloading your app.
Brand Takeover Ads
These ads appear upon opening the TikTok app – they are designed to be the first thing your users are faced with whilst opening the social platform. You can expect a wide reach from running a ‘brand takeover ad’ however this will come at a cost, whilst brand takeovers are known for their viral success they’re also known for being one of the highest cost advertisements on the app.
Branded Hashtag Challenge
If you’re looking for a way of receiving user-generated content, then this is the TikTok advertisement route for you. Similarly to typically using relevant hashtags on Tiktok, the branded hashtags challenges encourage user involvement.
When a user clicks on the hashtag they are redirected to a brand landing page, in which they can find all of the relevant challenge information, a link to the website, brand info and all other brand challenge related content.
How Do You Make Money On TikTok?
Whilst TikTok doesn’t charge it’s active users for using the app, you are able to earn an income from producing exciting content and receiving video views.
In order to make a profit from content production on TikTok your follower count must be above 10,000 and must occur over 100,000 views within the last 30 days. Once you reach the desired threshold you are able to apply for a ‘creators fund’
Alongside the paid creator fund route, users with high followers will also likely be approach by brands to help with their marketing efforts at promoting products or services to their viewing audience. This is also known as influencer marketing and is the process of partnering with an online figure in order to raise awareness of your brand.
There is no set guideline cost for an influencer marketing campaign, as this is typically negotiated between the brand and content creator, it can often be a fixed fee or a percentage of the profits made from their contribution
How Do You Get More Likes on TikTok?
There are several ways to get more Likes on TikTok. You can increase your account’s “fans” by uploading high-quality videos and engaging with your existing followers. You can also try posting videos that are controversial or poke fun at current events. For example, you can make fun of fashion trends, popular TV shows, and celebrities.
Providing useful or educational content is a good way to increase your account’s reach. You can also make your account more visible by using TikTok’s search function to find relevant hashtags and tags which with the right dedicated content can increase your following by thousands of followers.
Increasing likes on an individual TikTok post can be difficult, it needs to be targeted to the right audience, just as a blog post would need to provide quality content and useful information, so does your relevant videos.
The good thing about TikToks algorithm is that it learns it’s users likes and dislikes, and understand the content it shares with it’s users and aim to suggest similar content.
For example, if your offering relevant information or a product regarding the latest Marvel Movie, using the right hashtags and offering valuable information will be likely to have you feature on the feeds of thousands of Marvel fans who have already interacted with similar videos.
How To Gain Followers On TikTok?
As we’ve stated earlier, the difference between user and brand usage on TikTok varies, as a TikTok user whose sole purpose is to scroll through popular videos and create unique and personal content gaining followers can be a long-process which involves finding your individual niche and working to develop a personality within that community.
The most proven ways of gaining followers on the app includes:
- Leveraging Trends – TikTok is one of the most known platforms for having ‘social media trends’. Due to the mass amounts of user-generated content. By getting involved in trends it’s likely your profile will be shared, viewed and interacted with more.
- Effective hashtag usage – being involved in trending hashtags, daily hashtags and even topical hashtags.
- Cross-Promotion – ‘stitching’ videos and re-acting to videos is a great way to cross promote your profile with another users profile.
- Engaging with creators – forming partnerships, creating videos and dueting videos in attempts to boost one an other.
How To Develop TikTok Marketing Strategy?
Tik Tok has become a popular platform for entertainment and education. You can use TikTok to create short, entertaining videos to share with friends and family. You can also use TikTok to share educational videos. Let’s say, for example, you wanted to create a video about the dangers of drug use. You can use TikTok to quickly create a video showing how drugs affect the brain and body by using your smartphone’s camera. Or, you can create more personal videos sharing your experiences or advice on topics such as relationship advice, health, and careers. Sharing videos that are more personal or entertaining will help you gain more followers. You can also repost popular TikTok videos on your account to build your account’s visibility and account followers.
TikTok for business is a great way to reach your younger demographic and offer quality and sharable content, but planning the marketing strategy is key. Lets take a look at how to plan this:
- As with any type of marketing, you want to find out who your targeted audience is and what you can do to reach them – Breakdown your age, gender, location and make sure that they are active on TikTok in order to get the reach you want to achieve.
- Content Investigation – If you’re brand new to TikTok you may not know which videos are going to work for you and your brand. It’s a good idea to take a look at your competitors, or similar companies and see what a successful video looks like from them. Do they receive a large amount of interactions? which videos are the most popular.
- Content Production – As for your content strategy the best idea in the beginning is the ‘trial and error’ scenario. Producing popular content which have proven track records of working for other brands or users and putting your own individual spin on it.
- Analysis – TikTok analytics are brilliant for showing interactions audience analytics and a helpful analytics dashboard which will identify what videos were your most successful, which ones had a similar reach and which video outshone the rest. Keeping an eye on your analytical data over the course of your production period is key to identifying your most profitable videos.
- Preparation – Once you know which your most successful avenue is it’s time to produce videos in advance, scheduling and planning is key to any well established strategy, you don’t want to be making videos last minute, rushing editing and making small errors. Take the time to do your videos in advance, this way if a current trend leaves an option for any additional content then consider that an added bonus.
How To Make Good TikTok Videos?
There is no one way to receive millions of views or shares on TikTok, but there are ways to improve your video standards in order to provide a better quality video for your followers. Here are a few easy tips to making a good video:
- Short & Sweet – Whilst TikTok videos only have 3 timer settings, Hootsuite suggests that the most common viral videos that have surfaced from the popular social media channel TikTok have been between 7 – 15 seconds, these have the ability to reach a wider audience and are much more user-friendly that 3 minute videos, in which user engagement can drop.
- Trending sounds & Filters – Follow the trends from funny videos, video ads and videos from creators to keep relevant in the TikTok feed.
- Use the right hashtags
- Camera Quality
- Sharing options – having your privacy settings made public in order for more shareable content is key when it comes to your social media strategy.
To Conclude
If you’re looking for a place to share genuine content of your personal life, your small business or your company TikTok is the latest and greatest platform to do so. It’s the latest addition to the social media channels that have became massive key players in the digital marketing industry.
Having yet another way of reaching customers and co-operating with an engaged audience is ideal for any business. With the social media landscape constantly expanding and the average monthly users of TikTok increasing you would be silly not to consider a TikTok business strategy thats focused on targeting your audience through potential followers and users.
Start of slow, by posting a couple of videos per week in order to begin your social footprint is the right way to start, get involved in popular subject matter and keep up to date with relevant trends.
As you continue to monitor your success on TikTok you’ll understand more of the times per day to post and which Calls to action lead to the most conversions, or which influencer marketing work is most compatible with your brand.
Setting up your TikTok profile is as easy as setting up your Facebook or Instagram, with the ability of reaching much larger audiences you’ll be a TikTok Pro in no time!
