For many of us, social media has become a major part of our lives, and most people will go on at least one social media platform every single day. With over 1 billion users, TikTok really took off during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and its reputation has changed from being an app where people perform dance moves to a great space to connect and engage with friends and customers alike. In this blog, we’ll uncover how your business can utilise the power of TikTok to grow your business and achieve your goals.
What Is TikTok?
To summarise, TikTok is a social media app with a heavy focus on videos which are created for and consumed by its users. Business of Apps data suggests that it’s one of the fastest growing apps in the world and by the end of 2024, the platform will have surpassed 1.8 billion users!
TikTok users primarily upload short videos which are designed to quickly grab the attention of the consumer, and this has reshaped the way that many users use social media as a whole. With this in mind, it’s important that you curate content which meets the needs of the userbase and grabs their attention within the first few seconds. More on this later in the blog.
Why Use TikTok For Business Purposes?
As we recently uncovered, TikTok has grown extremely fast in a short space of time and continues to grow as time passes by. A recent report by We Are Social and Meltwater shows that people in the UK spend more time on TikTok than any other country in the world, with a whopping 49 hours and 29 minutes spent on the Android app each month!
With this in mind, it’s clear that no matter what your product or service is, there’s an extremely high chance that your customers will be utilising the platform, so you need to be present to capture their attention. Amazing benefits of using TikTok for your business include -
- Increased brand awareness - The way the platform’s algorithm works means that if your business correlates to something which they tend to engage with by searching, or watching for long periods of time, you’re likely to appear on their “for you page”. TikTok has also given another great platform for influencers to support your brand and new innovative ways for you to promote your business.
- Platform to promote your products/service - The fact that to navigate through the content, TikTok users constantly scroll down provides you with a platform to promote your offerings without it actually feeling like an advert. Many businesses create videos for TikTok which promote their offerings without it feeling like they’re selling anything, as users tend to watch the video before reading the caption to find out more.
- Attract new customers - TikTok is all about creating authentic, engaging, personal content. With this in mind, you’re able to build strong relationships with your audience and in the long term, turn them into customers. As with any marketing channel, if you manage to start a trend, or join in on one at the right time, you may end up “going viral” and acquiring a large number of new customers in a short period of time.
How to Create a TikTok for My Business
Creating a business TikTok account has several advantages, including separating your personal life from your business, access to more analytics tools and the ability to link your business to the popular TikTok Shop feature.
Creating a business TikTok account is simple and can be completed within less than 5 minutes. Whether you’ve already got a personal account which you want to convert to being a business (skip straight to step 3), or need to create an account from scratch, we’ve put together a step by step guide to help you get started.
Step 1 - Create your account.
Step 2 - Create your nickname - This should be your business name, to make it easier for your customers to find you.
Step 3 - Click the burger menu, and open “Settings and privacy”.
Step 4 - Select “Account”.
Step 5 - Tap “Switch to Business Account”.
Step 6 - Go through all of the necessary settings to open your business account and choose your business category.
Step 7 - Create your bio. This will provide people with more information about your business as users will see this when they click on your profile. We’ll cover this more, later in the blog.
Step 8 - You’re all set. You will now have access to more creator tools and analytics to enable you to reach your target audience!
Optimising Your Profile
If you want to show that you’re serious about your business and attract as many new customers as possible, you need to do everything to make your account stand out. Remember, your profile is essentially your digital storefront, so just like you wouldn’t leave your physical store a mess, you should take pride in your digital assets as they represent you and your brand.
Selecting The Right Profile Picture
It’s key to take pride in your profile picture as it’s the first thing which will connect the consumer to your brand. We would recommend that you consider ensuring that there’s consistency in your profile picture across all of your social media accounts to enhance familiarity. By choosing a high resolution image which fits the 20x20 dimensions set by TikTok, you’ll be able to catch your customer's eye as they scroll by or visit your profile. You can find out more about choosing the right profile picture in our Updated Social Media Image and Video Size Guide.
Crafting Your Bio
Your TikTok bio needs to be short and sweet as you’re only given 80 characters to provide information about your brand. To ensure you make an impact, consider how you can be straight to the point, without taking away your personality, this could be your brand slogan or an overview of your USPs.
Providing The Right Link
A common term we’ve heard as popularity has increased across social media is “link in bio” and this hasn’t changed with the introduction of TikTok. As part of your profile, you’re able to include one clickable URL, so it’s worth considering where you’d like to direct consumers if they land on your profile. Our top tip would be to use a link in bio tool such as Linktree so you can include various links and change them as necessary throughout different seasons and events.
How to Build Your TikTok Strategy
Just like with any activity you undertake as a business, to achieve maximum success which can continuously improve, you’ll need to build a strategy which you can stick to. Building your strategy will allow you to know what actions you’re taking and why, along with providing you with a way you’ll measure your results to adapt and tweak as time goes on. If you’re already active on other social media channels, you’ll likely have a social media strategy you can refer to, otherwise, we’ve created a detailed guide on “How to Build Your Social Media Strategy” to support you.
Your TikTok strategy will take some time to create and most likely will have several adaptations along the way. By spending the time to ensure you’ve got the pillars in place, you’ll be able to hit the ground running on the platform, so you can reach your business goals.
Setting Clear Goals
Whenever you form a strategy, the first place to start should always be setting the goals you’re looking to achieve. Without having goals, you’re going to find it difficult to steer yourself to success and have anything to measure your efforts against. Throughout your TikTok journey, you’ll likely refer back to your goals to see how well you’re doing and refine your strategy to ensure you stay on track, or better yet, overachieve! Great goals to set yourself at the start of your time on TikTok may include -
- Reach X followers in X months.
- Create X videos per week.
- Obtain X new customers from the platform.
We would suggest you consider writing your goals in the SMART format, which we’ve previously created a full guide on, as this allows you to expand on your goals to ensure that you’ve got a roadmap to success. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable/attainable, realistic and timebound. With this framework in mind, you can be clear on what you want to achieve, that it’s definitely possible and how you’re going to get there.
For example, Instead of just saying “I want 1000 followers”, you could break it down into, “I want to reach 1000 followers within 12 months of opening my account. To do this, I’ll be posting 4 videos per week and engaging with other users for at least 30 minutes per day so that I can talk to possible customers, thus increasing the chances of them finding my profile.” With this you can see what you’re going to do, when you’re going to be able to check back and how you plan on getting there, making your plan foolproof.
Understanding Your Target Audience
Understanding your target audience is crucial for the success of your brand on TikTok. Whether you’re creating content, writing captions or replying to comments, you need to be able to be in the right place, at the right time, saying the right things.
To get started with understanding your target audience, you can refer to a number of studies and insights available online, which can provide you with a baseline level of knowledge to start connecting with your customers. TikTok loves authentic content, so a great way to understand your target audience is by creating content and consistently analysing the analytics to see what is working well, and what you can improve on. If you find that customers are regularly engaging with one type of post, it could be worth considering doing it more often.
When analysing your content great metrics to look at include -
- Video views.
- Profile views.
- Engagements.
- Engagement rate.
Creating Content for TikTok
As we’ve touched upon several times throughout this blog, TikTok loves compelling, authentic content, which makes it one of the most fun platforms for businesses to try new, innovative ideas. Consumers will be greeted with plenty of new content to consume every time they open the app, so by taking the time to ensure that you create high quality content, you’re increasing the chance of people stopping to watch what you’ve created.
We know that to some people this can sound too easy, or to others, it can also sound over complicated, so we’ve put together 4 quick steps you can follow to start creating high quality content for TikTok -
- Plan your content in advance - By taking the time to consider your audience and the nature of the platform, you can reduce the risk of making your content seem overly formal or scripted. Keep in mind that most consumers on the platform want to escape reality, so maintaining the human element throughout your content is a great way to connect with your audience.
- Make the most of sound - TikTok loves helping stop people scrolling with the assistance of catchy sounds which grab the consumer's attention. Adding sounds is as simple as pressing “Add Sound” at the top of the recording screen, where you’ll be presented with a great library of sound effects and songs split into categories such as trending, recommended and genre.
- Optimise your posts - TikTok’s publishing feature makes it simple to optimise and organise your videos so they get the attention you’re looking for. To make the most of every video you publish, you could consider writing a description making the most of keywords your target audience might look for, utilising hashtags and tagging the relevant creators involved in the creation of your content.
- Post at the right times - By posting at the right time to suit your audience, you can ensure that you get the most eyes possible on your content. As you post more regularly, pay attention to when you’re getting the most engagement, and make the most of TikTok’s analytics tools which you’re granted as a business account to make data driven decisions. If you want a detailed guide, check out our blog which dives into “What Is the Best Time to Post on TikTok?”
Partnering With Influencers
Since social media has become such a big part of our lives, influencer marketing has become a much more prominent tactic in many business's marketing strategies. Many TikTok influencers are natural storytellers and have created hundreds, if not thousands of videos, making them experts in reaching an audience. Another major benefit of utilising influencers, is they’ve already already built a connection with your target audience, meaning that you’re able to essentially redirect their followers to your platforms.
If you really want to succeed with influencer marketing, it’s important to partner up with the right influencers. Just because somebody has a large number of followers doesn’t always lead to great results. You can sometimes partner with influencers who’ve got a small number of highly engaged followers who take what they say into consideration more often than just scrolling past.
In Conclusion
As social media has become a major part of everyday life, to ensure you stay in front of your target audience, it makes great sense to capitalise on one of the fastest growing platforms in the world. Using TikTok will help maximise brand awareness while also providing a new channel to promote your products and services to customers old and new, giving you an advantage over your competitors and setting your business up for success.
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