Make TikTok work for your company

Social media sites are constantly evolving, including new features, and updating their offering.

One site that has evolved at a rapid rate is the video-sharing platform TikTok. Since its launch in 2016, it quickly became the home of viral dance trends, challenges, lip-syncs and live videos.

However, viral dances and challenges aren’t the only things that are popular on the platform. This blog post will share how businesses can utilise TikTok to unleash their creative side and find new audiences.

Videos can be made with little to no budget and publishing them onto the platform allows for brand exposure to thousands of people, bringing in great PR for businesses. TikTok is experiencing massive rates of growth, meaning there is a large audience ready to be tapped into by creative and fast-thinking brands.

Getting started

A common misconception with TikTok is that it is geared towards teens. Whilst there are a lot of younger people on the platform, users of all ages are hopping on the phenomenon, with celebrities, influencers, and household brands now all in the mix.

Once the app is downloaded, spend a bit of time scrolling through the ‘For You’ feed (the equivalent of Instagram’s explore page) to see what trends you like, which are going viral and which you could adapt to fit in with your brand values. This feed is personalised through algorithms for everyone and will become more targeted towards your interests, the more you interact with content on the app.

By now you will already have set up an account in your brand’s name. To drive user traffic from the app towards your website, it is a great idea to include a link to the most impressive page in your profile biography. Users can also link their Instagram and YouTube profiles to the top of their TikTok profile to draw attention to their other platforms.

When your profile is set up, it is time to start recording. The + button at the bottom of the app will bring the recording suite up and introduce you to the easy-to-use video editing tools that TikTok provide. All filters can be added whilst recording, but some can also be added once filming has finished. It is well worth spending an hour or so playing about with the effects and filters to see which fit into your brand styles, key messages, and sense of humour.

The ‘Discover’ tab is also helpful to get an idea of what is performing well on the platform at that moment in time. Here, users can see sponsored posts, popular videos sorted by category and which hashtags and sound effects are proving popular in your geographic location.

‘Live’ videos on TikTok are when a user turns their camera on, for the audience to see right at that moment in time. Brands may find this tool useful when sharing exciting images of stockroom deliveries, or when they are witnessing or working on something riveting.

TikTok has a huge trend culture, which sets it apart from the other main social platforms. This means that videos which are easy to replicate or are a spin-off of an existing trend, are most likely to skyrocket to success on the app.

Going viral

The trend culture that we just spoke about can thrive due to the way TikTok champions content over following, unlike platforms like Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

To go viral on TikTok, your video will have to be something interesting or fun that will captivate the people scrolling. There is no right or wrong way to do it, but the best way to quickly grasp what works for you is to get experimenting and creating.

The hashtags used in the video’s description will also boost the visibility of a post to others on the app. To be as successful as possible, they should be relevant to the content, but tags such as #foryou, #foryoupage,#fyp, #viral, #trending, and #funny are pretty universal and will likely boostviews across the app.

It is also interesting to note how the use of sounds can skyrocket content on TikTok. The TikTok Sounds library is where the magic happens. It is where you can find songs, iconic clips and quotes to use in your video. Creators can either use the Sounds library or use their own original audio, however, it is worth noting that once uploaded, anyone can then use your audio on their videos.

The easiest way to get your great video going viral is by using one of the sounds trending at that moment in time. Trending sounds change every day and vary from popular chart music, funny quotes from the screen and even computer-generated voices.

Algorithm insights

Unlike Instagram, videos on TikTok can get millions of views, regardless of the account’s popularity, interactions, or frequency of use. It is because TikTok considers the interactions on each individual video, as opposed to the video makers profile interaction overall.

When a video is initially uploaded to the app, it will appear to a few people, typically in the same geo-location as the poster. If the video is well received on the ‘For You’ page at this early stage, it will then get shown to a larger pool of people, across different locations.

The more re-watches, shares, comments, duets and likes the video has, the better it seems to do when placing on the ‘For You’ page, giving it the potential to go viral. This means that account with little to no followers can still enjoy the dizzy heights of TikTok fame, as long as their content can capture a relevant audience.

It is also worth noting that videos on TikTok can rise in popularity massively days, or sometimes weeks after they were first posted. This is because the TikTok algorithm is constantly monitoring the performance of all videos. This tends to happen when the sound you have used, or a hashtag in the description of the video suddenly gets a spike in popularity.

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