Staying ahead of the trends gives you an edge on your competition in any industry.

For companies looking to connect with their customers, there are few trends bigger than TikTok.

A video-first social media solution taking the world by storm, TikTok has rapidly earned millions of downloads worldwide. There are more than 130 million active users in the US, and experts predict there are around 1 billion TikTok accounts overall.

Early adopters of rising social media stars like Snapchat and Instagram proved the companies capable of leveraging new trends early often achieve the fastest growth.

Today, TikTok is ripe with opportunity, entering the marketing world at the perfect time. Within months, it managed to reach customers all over the world during the pandemic, when media consumption was higher than ever. Even Washington Post hired it’s own TikTok experts during 2020, and now it boasts more than 1 million followers.

It’s time you discover the benefits of using TikTok for business.

It’s a Great Way to Build Communities

TikTok rose to popularity during the pandemic, when many customers were searching for new ways to entertain themselves and connect with brands while at home. TikTok has now become a staple of many people’s lives, making it an excellent way to engage with your customers.

As the home to authentic, emotional video content, TikTok helps businesses build communities of trusting and loyal customers. Companies like Starface are using the channel to simultaneously show their fun side and share information about their product.

TikTok is all About Video

The popularity of video content is rising. By 2020, 85% of all businesses said they’d used some kind of video marketing to attract audiences. TikTok helps brands to create the kind of video content their audience most wants to see.

In an age where customers are spending less time watching TV and more time online, they want to see more playful, less “produced” content from brands. TikTok allows you to experiment with all kinds of video content to trigger emotions, educate, and entertain your audience. You can access the green screen feature, stitch videos together, or even duet with an influencer.

Amazing Exposure and Engagement

TikTok is an amazing destination for companies looking to reach a wide variety of customers. While the most common TikTok strategy for brands is to use the platform to reach Gen Z and younger customers, you can connect with all kinds of clients here.

As an example, Jennifer Lopez once published the same video on Twitter and TikTok. Though she had only 5 million followers on TikTok, and 45 million on Twitter, the TikTok video got 71 million views, compared to 2 million on Twitter. Engagement is incredible on this platform.

It’s a Different Kind of Social Platform

It’s easy to blend in with the crowd on social media these days. Countless companies are already active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. TikTok is still in the very early stages of growth, giving companies a chance to stand out.

TikTok also focuses on different kinds of content. Unlike posts on YouTube, Twitter, and even Facebook, your videos aren’t expected to be pristine and perfect. Instead, you can experiment with a range of raw and unedited content to form deeper connections to your customers. There are also endless opportunities to have fun with trends and challenges.

Anyone Can Go Viral

One particularly valuable part of having a TikTok strategy for brands, is anyone can go viral. TikTok’s algorithm doesn’t prevent people with fewer followers from attracting the most attention on the app. Rather, videos are displayed to people based on their interest. This means as long as you know your audience, you can make a real splash.

The best way to ensure you get amazing exposure on TikTok is to ensure you’re aware of the latest trends. There are constantly changing challenges and events in place to get involved with, so make sure you’re checking out what influencers and other professionals are doing in your space.

Videos Created By Your Team

Behind-the-scenes videos created by members of staff look more authentic and trustworthy than over-produced professional content. Give your people a chance to take the reigns in your TikTok campaign from time to time, with brand guidelines to keep them focused. The best team created TikTok content will be:

• Human: Ensure you included plenty of human faces to create emotional connections.
• Authentic: Don’t try to make the video perfect, a realistic, ad-hoc video is more compelling
• Funny: People love comedy on TikTok, so try to get involved with memes and jokes
• Creative: use popular creative ingredients like animals, food and tips
• Relatable: Consider the needs and pain points of your target audience

Getting involved with challenges is a good idea too – as people love watching brands share their take on a popular trend.

User-Generated Content

As your followers grow, you’ll start to notice more interactions with your teams. TikTok followers have a habit of recreating the videos they enjoy from their favorite brands.

People actively respond to videos on TikTok, by getting involved in duets or posting their own videos to engage with brands. This makes the platform ideal for collecting user-generated content. Since millennials value authenticity above all else, it makes sense to stock up on content created by trusting, happy clients as often as possible.

You can even improve your chances of collecting content and attracting new customers at the same time, by creating your own hashtag or hashtag challenge. Another option is to search for influencers and TikTok users in your community and engage with their content. This is a good way to pull attention back to your profile.

Tiktok Advertisements

TikTok only launched its advertising platform (TikTok for Business) recently, in June 2020. This environment is quickly emerging as a must-visit place and marketing hub, where you can access a range of paid advertisement options, such as:

• TopView: The ads users see when they first open TikTok
• In feed videos: Ads that appear in between videos and user content.
• Brand takeovers: Events where brands take over the app for a day and create all kinds of GIFs, videos, and images to promote themselves.
• Hashtag challenges: Opportunities to promote branded hashtags to increase awareness, engagement, and boost your chances of going viral.
• Branded effects: Branded lenses you can create with a graphic designer to put in the background or foreground of other people’s videos.

Many companies end up using a range of different kinds of TikTok advertisements to generate the best results. Make sure you track the outcomes of your campaigns to determine what efforts work best.

Influencer-Created Content

Influencer created content is some of the most valuable content on TikTok. More than anywhere else, TikTok is a platform for younger audiences in search of authenticity. Influencers are often far more appealing than brands when customers are looking for realistic experiences.

To determine which influencers, you need to work with, you can check out some of the top-rated people on the market (like these), or find out who competing companies are working with. You can also examine which influencers show up when you search on TikTok for keywords in your industry.

Make sure the influencers you choose are relevant to your brand and listen to their advice on how to make your content stand out.

NFL

The NFL is one of the most popular groups on TikTok right now. Currently leveraging a 2-year content partnership with the platform, the NFL dedicates a lot of time and effort to success on the app. NFL’s content is packed full of fun and humor. The group isn’t afraid to get involved with memes and funny challenges, but they also share a lot of heartfelt player stories and incredible sports too.

With 6.5 million followers right now, the NFL TikTok team is an excellent insight into how a creative approach to social media can really pull audience attention.

Ryanair

Ryanair hasn’t always had the best reputation among airlines, but that’s starting to change with the help of TikTok. Putting humor first, Ryanair uses its profile to poke fun at itself and show it doesn’t take its brand too seriously. Ryanair’s content also takes advantage of the latest TikTok trends, like placing facial features on a plane with a hilarious filter.

Thanks to TikTok, Ryanair is improving its reputation with a new generation of customers and paving the way for future travellers to love the brand.

Fenty Beauty

Created by Rhianna, the Fenty Beauty TikTok page is a great place for the musical superstar to show her fun side and attract new customers to her creations. Rihanna is a huge fan of sharing user generated content on her TikTok feed, featuring people using her makeup collection.

The Fenty Beauty account is also packed with helpful make-up tips and how-to’s, which keep followers coming back to find tips for their beauty routine. Having snippets from Rihanna’s life included in the content stream is also a huge bonus, thanks to her celebrity standing.

@fentybeauty

Purrrrrrr, boo! 🤩 #FentyBeautyTries the #REVERSECATEYE 🖤 what new beauty trend are u gettin into? #fentybeauty #beautyhacks #beautytutorial #makeup

♬ LovingCall - Official Sound Studio

Yahoo News

Yahoo News takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to TikTok. Though a little overlooked in a digital world that’s all about Google, Yahoo is keen to attract new, younger customers with insights into important news updates. With this account, Yahoo have gained around 1.4 million followers who love their fresh take on important world stories.

Yahoo is effective on TikTok because they know how to condense important information into quick bite-sized videos – ideal for the platform. The videos manage to be both fun and informative, helping to educate fans, without overwhelming them.

Chipotle

Probably one of the best-known brands on TikTok right now, Chipotle is taking the social media world by storm. The food-focused team concentrates on gaining engagement from their target audience, through unique challenges like the #ChiptleLidFlip challenge, and the #GuacDance challenge.

Chipotle are also excellent at producing content to show off their delicious food. There’s plenty of how-to guides and behind-the-scenes looks at the meals being made to get your mouth watering. Chipotle are also great at finding a range of influencers to work with that go beyond the standard well-known celebrities. There are tons of TikTok leaders connected with the brand.

Guess

Guess is growing rapidly with it’s presence on TikTok. The company jumped into action immediately as TikTok rose to fame, with customized #hashtag campaign like #InMyDenim. Over the last year or so, the company has boosted its presence online with influencer campaigns with celebrities like @OurFire and @Madison_Willio.

The #LoveGuess hashtag is still popular today, helping the company to track down an excellent variety of user generated content posts and potential micro influencers. Since fashion is one of the many industries that does well on TikTok, Guess is in a great position for growth.

Gymshark

With an impressive 3.3 million followers, Gymshark makes athleticism and working out more fun. This amazing company has built an entire strategy around their TikTok presence, focused heavily on humor and memes. The content created by this company focuses on appealing to a younger audience looking for a little bit of fun with their fitness strategy.

The Gymshark company highlights the importance of finding the right TikTok strategy for brands – one where you resonate with a younger audience. The brand also frequently engages in TikTok challenges too.

Netflix

Netflix has an active presence on most social media platforms – but it’s thriving extremely well on TikTok. With over 16.5 million followers, Netflix knows how to reach its target audience with creative, artistic content focusing heavily on dynamic captions. The company is also extremely effective at creating meme-style content for a younger audience.

Great for humor and varied videos, Netflix connects with its customers on an emotional level with topical sound bites, insights into real-life experiences, and engaging interviews with influencers. Netflix even shares exclusive content for its TikTok followers.

San Diego Zoo

San Diego Zoo has made an incredible impact on TikTok in the last year, by combining educational videos, with cute content about animals and funny members. Cute animal videos perform fantastically on most social media channels, so the Zoo was already in a great position to earn popularity. The group also takes full advantage of partnerships with animal-friendly brands.

Through beautiful, fresh and authentic content focused on animals, San Diego Zoo has earned more than 2 million followers. There are videos for almost every kind of animal lover.

Red Bull

Red Bull often does well on social media because it understands its target audience and knows how to speak their language. For years, the company has been a pioneer of digital content, with death-defying stunts and amazing videos showcasing the power of having the right amount of energy. Today, Red Bull is among the most popular brands on TikTok, with nearly 6 million followers

As you might expect if you’ve seen Red Bull’s content before, the videos focus heavily on action-packed activities, like flying planes or surfing massive waves. The branded hashtag #GivesYouWings is very popular, and the company regularly gets involved with hashtag challenges too. TikTok knows exactly how to get users to stop scrolling.

Discover the Benefits of Using TikTok For Business

Though still in the early stages of growth, TikTok has transformed the social media marketing scene forever. Available in more than 150 countries today, the video-focused platform is the perfect way to earn audience engagement and showcase your brand’s fun side. Though Gen Z might be the biggest presence on TikTok, it’s also home to countless older consumers too.

The best thing about TikTok right now is that it’s not as overly saturated as the other social platforms, like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. If you’re struggling to find organic engagement in your existing social strategies, TikTok could be a brilliant way to boost your visibility again.

A single hashtag challenge or a couple of high-performing videos is all it takes to get people talking about your brand.