TikTok for business. What is this social network all about 

With over 1 billion monthly active users  TikTok has quickly become one of the largest social media platforms in the world. What started as a fun video streaming app for Gen Zers, changed the marketing world by storm and changed the way brands create and share content. 

You may think that TikTok is all about challenges, pranks, and dance videos. While that’s not entirely false, there’s also a ton of opportunity in the entertainment content for brands to connect with their audience on a personal level.  

47.4 % of US TikTokers, are below their 30s and over half of them are teenagers. When thinking about targeting your products for teenagers, TikTok is a gold mine.  

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1095186/tiktok-us-users-age/ 

These youngsters eventually grow up to become your target audience, with TikTok heavily influencing their desires, aspirations, and even purchase decisions. Remember that there is still the remaining 50 % of users who are aged over 30.  

So what do you actually benefit from using TikTok as a marketing tool for your company?  

1. You’ll rise your brand’s awareness. TikTok offers various ways for you to spread the word about your brand. There is a bunch of influencers, different types of ads, hashtags, and stickers, to put your brand in the spotlight. When you create entertaining content, you have the chance to go viral and hit the jackpot.  

2. You can promote your products without it even feeling like doing marketing. Without coming across as pushy, you can promote your products in a variety of ways, such as by collaborating with influencers that your audience has faith in, producing videos that are actually helpful and entertaining, and more. 

3. Enlarge your audience. There are millions of TikTok users spread out across more than 140 countries. It is one of the best platforms for expanding your customer base and reaching international audiences. In addition, there is always the added advantage of reaching only TikTok users who do not use any other social media platforms. 

4. Attract customers. The idea of TikTok is to create authentic, engaging content, that feels personal and human just for you. This is an advance in building a strong and sustainable relationship with your audience and increases the chances of them becoming your customers. Also hopping on a trend at the right time (or even better, starting a trend) You most likely will acquire a lot of new customers. 

So how do you actually use it as a part of your marketing campaign? 

Well, when you first download and open your Tiktok app, you will see an endless amount of content posted in the app and it is your job to stand out from this sea of content. The content needs to be unique, interesting, and relevant to your audience and business. 

Tiktok is mainly a platform for playful and fun content. You might need to forget the old-schooled marketing ways and actually adapt to the culture without compromising your own brand and values. Since it is this playful platform, creating too scripted and formal videos is probably not the best way to get people interested in your content. Don’t overthink the process of making videos, usually the most authentic videos are created without overthinking. Hop on to different trends and challenges with your co-workers, and let the audience see that you are having fun.  

Make sure you write a description for your videos for the audience to understand your content better and use trending hashtags, there you can target your potential customers better. With a TikTok business account, you can add links to your videos and get the audience to maybe check your website.  

One of the most important strategies for Tiktok is to pay close attention to the usage behavior of your audience. What times are using the app? Which days of the week they are using it the most? If you post in the middle of the night when most of your targeted audience is sleeping, you might not get as much engagement as you have hoped for. Make sure to check Tiktok’s built-in analytics to gather some data about your audience.  

As we talked about earlier, the best for a Tiktok business account is to have your content go viral. Since challenges are the bread-and-butter for the app, creating one has extreme viral potential. Everyone wants to try them out and share their own videos about your challenge. Before launching a challenge, think first about what are your goals. Maybe you want to increase brand awareness? Drive sales on new products? Promote upcoming events? Once you defined the right objective for you, go get it.  

Like on any other social media platform, you can pay for Tiktok to advertise your business. They are the annoying ads that are popping up on your screen every once in and while. Collaborating with famous Tiktok influencers is highly recommended since they have a huge audience who will most likely follow their idol’s buying habits.  

Since Tiktok is here to stay and is growing all the time, if you still are not using it, you are missing out on huge potential brand awareness, money, and potential customers.  

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/tiktok-for-business/ 

(Sheikh. M. How to use tiktok for business effectively and grow your audiance. Read on 11.10.2022) 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1095186/tiktok-us-users-age/ 

(Distribution of TikTok users in the United States as of September 2021, by age group. Read on 11.10.2022)