Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their very own.
TikTok is the reigning and probably longest-running star of social media.
In 2021, TikTok achieved a record-breaking 656 million downloads (leaving the second-place platform, Instagram, within the mud by 100 million) and remained the one social media app moreover Fb to surpass three billion downloads.
However TikTok’s dominance is greater than statistical and makes even greater waves concerning sheer affect.
In the event you’ve observed your Instagram and Fb feeds change lately to prioritize video and present you extra viral content material from outdoors your community, you may blame it on TikTok. Though all corners of the social media panorama are affected by it, Meta properties appear notably shaken by simply how briskly the TikTok takeover occurred. Instagram particularly.
Content material tendencies have been shifting away from the written phrase for some time now. 5 years in the past, we had a large podcast increase, which has since slowed down because of the phantasm of market saturation. Now, it is all about bite-size movies.
Associated: How Manufacturers Are Capitalizing TikTok to Win New Audiences
TikTok and clones like Instagram Reels are taking off. On the similar time, apps like Twitter are comparatively stagnant as a result of scrolling endlessly by way of movies is a extra gratifying expertise than the identical content material retweeted a number of occasions or updates from household and lingering highschool acquaintances you by no means converse to.
TikTok is one of the best of each worlds concerning social media content material. It exhibits effort and creativity however does not require a excessive degree of polish to achieve success. The much less skilled your TikToks are, the extra genuine they seem. For this reason it is troublesome for manufacturers, particularly long-established ones, to wrap their minds round TikTok features. Let’s face it: overwork and overthinking run rampant in most inventive departments, and although they usually produce stellar materials, authenticity can go lacking.
Associated: This is Why Not Being on TikTok Is a Large Mistake
So, let’s do some brainstorming. The 15 to 25-year-old crowd at present guidelines TikTok, but when one child with a telephone digital camera and a dream can do it, your well-staffed advertising staff can too. It is only a matter of understanding the terrain and replicating what works.
The 4 Guidelines Of TikTok Success
Rule #1 – Do not make adverts
If somebody got here to your birthday celebration and began handing out their enterprise playing cards, you would be aggravated — and that is placing it mildly. TikTok just isn’t the place for influencer or Billo adverts, with one exception we’ll focus on later.
Nobody is on the platform for ads, and it is simply inappropriate and miscalculated to pump out purely promotional content material for video channels. Embrace the content material marketer inside you and begin fascinated about how one can add worth to individuals’s day.
Rule #2 – Make adverts…however run them as adverts.
Once I mentioned “do not make adverts,” I meant do not make adverts and add them to your TikTok account. Like each different platform, TikTok has a enterprise aspect that can enable manufacturers to run adverts. This is the place you may run your advert marketing campaign in an inoffensive approach. Nonetheless, I’d not recommend merely working adverts on TikTok and ignoring the content material aspect of the platform — that’s the meat of the app and what customers are coming to see.
Rule #3 – Not inventive? Not essentially an issue.
Opposite to in style perception, you shouldn’t have to take your workers hostage and power them to bop to the newest trending track to go viral. If you do not have the inventive means to provide your viable TikTok content material, then discover somebody who does. There isn’t a scarcity of creators who need to accomplice with manufacturers.
However let me repeat: creators. Not influencers. The distinction is {that a} content material creator can provide your model a storyline and supply some course (and much-needed humor) in direction of what’s trending. An influencer can look cute and maintain your product in entrance of the digital camera. That is nice for those who’re in search of purely promotional content material for Fb adverts however not what you need on TikTok.
Rule #4 – Hold your ears open.
Social listening is an undervalued and much more underutilized software. I suppose I should not let you know the key to my success, however I really feel beneficiant immediately. Spend money on social listening instruments like Awario or BuzzSumo to make sure you by no means miss a beat concerning what’s popping off on-line.
TikTok lives on tendencies, however the unlucky fact is that these tendencies have a lifecycle of a couple of week, for those who’re fortunate. Social listening instruments are appropriate for pinpointing what’s effervescent beneath the floor so that you just’re able to seize it as soon as it emerges.
TikTok takes technique, creativity and time. Main manufacturers have all these sources at their disposal however appear somewhat hopeless when mastering them for a bulletproof TikTok strategy.
If I may boil my recommendation right down to a easy sentence, it could be this: keep in mind that you are a marketer, the midpoint between a content material creator and a salesman. Use each elements of that id to make content material that hits the goal.
Associated: How TikTok Can Assist You Supercharge Your Profession