Why Brands Should Not Ignore TikTok

TikTok is a unique place where modern trends are born, and users open limitless opportunities for creativity and business promotion. Adults and children, celebrities and ordinary people share dances, songs, challenges, and other trendy stuff there. Major brands have already realized that you can seriously promote your business in TikTok if you shoot viral videos instead of advertising.

While Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylie Jenner, and Selena Gomez are competing for the title of the most popular Instagram star, a new generation of megastars with millions of followers is growing up on TikTok. These celebrities, most of whom are representatives of Generation Z, have become famous for creating short videos with viral dances and funny scenes that gain thousands of reposts. Addison Rae, one of the highest-earning TikTok stars, knows what we are talking about here. She quickly rose to fame after joining TikTok in the summer of 2019 and sharing dances and lip-syncs to popular songs on the app. With her 86.6 million followers on the app, the teen can easily compete with the top influencers. More specifically, they need years to achieve the same result on the web.

TikTok has been downloaded over three billion times, and its popularity and influence are only growing. That might be a surprise for you, but expanding awareness of your brand and increasing your client base may expect you in this addictive scrolling machine. So let’s see what you need to be aware of when building your brand’s presence on TikTok.

Forget about the rules when dealing with TikTok.

We all get used to specific rules and formulas when promoting accounts on social media. For example, our standard scheme is creating exciting content, building a personal brand, increasing the number of followers, celebrating the results. TikTok breaks these rules.

TikTok is the social media platform that democratizes content the most. A significant feature of the platform, thanks to which incredible success stories of unknown users have become possible— is that the algorithm does not base recommendations on the number of the author’s followers or the effect of previous TikTok videos. This means that a newbie’s video has as much chance to land on the For You Page as a celebrity’s video. Moreover, the company suggests ‘try less’ and not be surprised if you get thousands of likes.

TikTok spreads influence at lightning speed, and it does not matter if you are a good comedian, a bad comedian, dancer, marketer, teacher, or doctor. No matter what category you fit into, all users are united by the same songs and jokes. It is just essential to create content that will look organic. Therefore, successful brands in TikTok carefully study trends and how users shoot videos, which tools they use. For example, take a look at Gucci’s video and how the brand stays away from the glossy print ads and billboard advertising associated with high fashion.

TikTok is a self-sustaining ecosystem with its language. Other popular social media platforms will not help you better understand this social network; you need to spend a few weeks scrolling through the videos to get an overall idea of what works here.

TokTok is all about the trends.

Due to the use of a trending format and popular tools, for example, the voice-over function and sounds, the video looks very organic on the platform. A sound on TikTok is not only its feature but also an opportunity to promote your creativity. When you watch a video with the sound you like, you can tap the audio and get the list of the videos where creators put their own spin on the sound. As a result, the application has become a source of learning new music and a place where the main song trends are born.

Music in TikTok helps users and brands to touch people’s feelings in a unique way that is not available for other platforms. Music holds the users’ attention and encourages them to concentrate on the content entirely.

Trends, challenges, and dances are born here, and songs often gain popularity. All these fuel a culture of participation, which captures users and makes them want to join and share their vision of the content they like. To be successful in TikTok, brands need to create entire content, taking music as the main engine of creativity.

Even though TikTok is based on artificial intelligence algorithms, hashtags still play a significant role for users looking for content. Using these tags, users search for the right content, choose bloggers, follow challenges, and much more.

For example, clicking Victoria’s Secret’s #Pink2020 hashtag takes TikTok users to a page engineered to promote engagement beyond views. In one place, you can see the list of the videos created with the brand hashtag and other data like the number of views, Learn More, Shop Now buttons, and more.

Another example is Guess launching the hashtag #InMyDenim. The brand asked users to post before and after videos to transform their outfits from a mess to best-dressed; no need to say how successful the brand expanded the audience. 

Advertising is not the solution.

People open TikTok for one purpose – for entertainment. Therefore, if brands want to find a common language with the application users, they must provide entertainment content. And the best way to follow this rule is not to shoot ads but videos that match the platform format.

“Shoot a TikTok, not ads” is not just a slogan – it is a call to action and a warning: nothing annoys platform users more than traditional advertising interrupting their favorite content. In addition, people are more likely to trust the advice of people like them, rather than companies trying to sell something.

It is essential to make users spread the brand message and make it viral. That is why the content of the behind-the-scenes format is very popular: the brand allows fans to see behind the scenes – look at the creative process behind the products. And this is much more interesting than advertising. So listen to your TikTok audience and hear what it expects and rejects.

While TikTok dominates the social media space, Vista Social is your perfect helper to engage in your social communities more efficiently and create a meaningful customer experience. To add more, Vista Social is the world’s first, fully approved by TikTok, official TikTok integration. Vista Social’s TikTok integration includes publishing of videos, as well as rich analytics. So plan content, engage your audience, collaborate as a team, and measure efforts from a single platform.

Conclusion

TikTok is undoubtedly a phenomenon: technological, cultural, social. Compared to business promotion on other digital platforms, TikTok videos convey information better, increase brand awareness, increase user loyalty, and motivate them to purchase. So evaluate what trends suit your brand and be realistic. And remember, on Tik Tok, everything happens at the speed of Generation Z: fast, fun, spontaneous. Accept this!

Get your Vista Social account set up for free to evaluate all the powerful features the platform offers for your TikTok marketing strategy. TikTok direct publishing, tools to manage multiple TikTok profiles, gathering strategic insights with TikTok analytics will help you grow stronger relationships on social.