Does the latest new social media outlet TikTok confuse you? To some, it perhaps seems like only a lip-syncing video app for teens, but it’s much more than that.
If you use TikTok the right way, you can introduce your business or startup or product to a huge following. According to Datareportal 2020, TikTok has 800 million active users worldwide. That places TikTok 9th in terms of social media outlets, ahead of well-known platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
However, TikTok isn’t the right outlet for all types of businesses. Here is how you can determine if it is right for you.
The app, initiated in 2016 by ByteDance, a Chinese Company, has been depicted as a blend of Vine, Twitter, and Instagram, enabling its 800million monthly users to create short-form, music-focused videos and edit them with lenses, filters, and AR features.
Initially recognized as Musical.ly, TikTok strode neatly into the gap left by Vine after its untimely exit in 2017 and has been steadily gaining the interest of young users and business owners or startups as well since with its short, highly enthralling content.
41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24 (Globalwebindex, 2019),
making it an excellent target for any brands yearning the canny attention of Gen Z.
TikTok is again striking because it is an uncharted area in terms of marketing. The app has hardly just started scouring paid advertising and delivers an accessible arena for influencers to fight for leading roles. With the ever-growing popularity of engagement marketing, TikTok is an ideal alternative for businesses or startups to advertise their products in a manner that doesn't feel phony or not genuine.
As with any social media platform, you will be immediately blacklisted if you look like you don't know what you're doing or not obeying the verbal rules that come along with social media outlets. Spend time on the app , create your profile, follow popular users, and build practice content until you feel like you have an idea on what real users like to engage with and what the outlet’s culture is.
Mike Prasad, CEO of Tinysponsor said ,”For a business to be successful on TikTok, they need to first be active on TikTok.Give users a reason to follow you.Keep in mind that authenticity is the key here, don't try to create memes if that isn't your business' vibe. Generate content that suits your brand and endorses your definite goals.”
TikTok supports four types of advertisements on the app namely : brand takeovers, native video ads, hashtag challenges, and branded lenses. Each one contributes to a distinct goal and will have a varied effect based on the kind of campaign you're carrying out.
Infeed native ads functions similarly to Snapchat or Instagram story ads. They play in full screen, are skippable, and must be 9-15 seconds in duration, like any other TikTok video. You can assess the ad’s success through trailing clicks, sensations, click-through rate (CTR), video views and engagements.
Brand takeovers enable one brand to dominate the app for a day and permit you to formulate images, GIFs, and videos. You can again ingrain links to reaching pages or to hashtag challenges within the app. To evaluate your achievement for a brand takeover, peek at impressions and the CTR. Furthermore, you can build branded lenses much like Instagram or Snapchat filters that users can put in their videos. Branded lenses are like the Snapchat 2D and 3D lenses for faces and photos.
Lastly, Startups or small businesses can do hashtag takeovers, where you create a hashtag and an end objective or prize for partakers. For instance, Dreamwork Pictures hosted a winning hashtag challenge to publicize its new Netflix show where the corporation enticed TikTok users to create a video of themselves dancing to the show's theme song and publicizing it under the hashtag #SpiritRidingFree. The crusade reached around 34.4 million users with over 2.6 million engagements.
This is a terrific illustration of a business identifying the importance of handling a crusade on TikTok versus another social media outlet, because Spirit Riding Free is a kids show, and TikTok's user base is young, it had a big demographic footing for its campaign .
It has been mentioned before, content is king, and it can be affirmed that no platform is more crucial than on TikTok.
Contrary to Instagram, TikTok mainly dismisses sophisticated, high-quality content.Hence, it has gained a reputation as an informal casual outlet where users feel relaxed expressing themselves. Prasad says,”The beauty of TikTok is that it's a convenient creative space and that suggests it sprouts on a pinch of quirkiness and avoids heavily commercial-style creations."
Allow engagement to be your cue and delve into what is amusing about your business or startup. You must completely know your brand culture, values, and disposition so that what you develop is real and authentic to your brand, and avoids conventional corporate protocols.Madelyn Fitzpatrick, head of global communications at Hylink Group states that "TikTok is a hub of creative, fun and sometimes crazy ideas, so try to soften the brand tone and join the playful community and avoid being overly formal and stiff."
Why TikTok?
TikTok is somewhat new, primarily to the business world, and, therefore it's not essentially as drenched as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. It's likewise much inexpensive to advertise on, because there isn't a powerful influencer community yet, there are fewer users vying for ad placements and sponsorships.
It again permits you to scour several elements of your business, like what makes you interesting and fun, and TikTok delivers an outlet where those interesting aspects will be received and can earn you money.
Also, it helps you take the critical first stride into marketing to Gen Z, the notoriously tough-to-market-to generational community, which is becoming more vital as they reach a stronger footing in the economy.Selling to this new age doesn't have to be difficult, just meet them where they are, play by their rules and have fun accomplishing it.
So, does TikTok make more sense to you now? If your startup small business has a younger target audience, TikTok is an excellent spot to snag their attention. Use these suggestions to ensure you get the most out of your TikTok profile..
