TikTok continues to grow in popularity, with 750 million monthly users, making it a great platform for brands and businesses to engage with new audiences.
What makes TikTok so unique is the use of trending sounds, whereby people create a concept around a sound that can then be adapted. These adaptations provide a unique opportunity for you to make it your own.
A great example is how many people take clips from movies and then use that sound to make a joke about everyday life. For Big Cat, as a marketing agency, we center our content around work humour and agency culture. Therefore we used the sound to make a joke about our everyday life - accidentally make a small error in an email:
https://www.tiktok.com/@bigcatagency/video/7176620256994004229?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en
This is just one way to use TikTok. In the blog we will explore 3 other TikTok trends your brand or business may want to hop on.
TikTok Lives
TikTok lives have been growing in popularity with users tuning into TikTok lives much like they do on television.
TikTok lives provide you with an opportunity to deepen your connection with your audience. Allowing them to see your brand completely unfiltered and real. Live streaming different elements of your brand's process (i.e. the development of a new product) or a day-in-the-life of your company's CEO, bring your audience on the journey with you and deepen the relationship.
Pro-tip, look at Lives like a scheduled TV show. Create a weekly or bi-weekly programme that your audience can consistently tune in to vs. going Live at random. This allows them to get excited for the event and overall, Live slated to replace time people spend watching television. Therefore, treating it like a television programme mimics existing user behaviour and gives your audience what they are already enjoy and crave.
Ditching the corporate rule book
Brands and businesses are realising that the key to success on TikTok is to not take your brand too seriously. Especially since being humorous is one of the top pillars that make up the platform. A great example is the supermarket M&S. As a supermarket, you would expect their social media channel to be full of recipe ideas, cooking inspiration and new product alerts. Instead, they embraced the TikTok style of content and have filled their feed with humorous, fun and off-the-cuff content.
The result is over 3 million likes on their feed and almost 150,0000 followers. Here is a great example of one of their TikToks.
https://www.tiktok.com/@mandsfood/video/7147692343087435034?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en
For brands and businesses, it is important to remember that being fun and funny doesn’t have to mean that people don’t take you seriously. Instead, this kind of content makes you more relatable, memorable and well-liked on the platform.
Long-format content
When TikTok started, super short content reigned supreme. However, as the platform has evolved, longer content with deeper storytelling has become more and more popular. With videos up to 3 minutes long becoming more widely viewed.
This allows for more educational content like cooking recipes, DIY how-tos and more. The move creates a big opportunity for brands to engage their audience for longer through high-value content with big pay-off (like a tutorial or review).
Here is a great example of a high-value, 3-minute video on TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@britishbakeoff/video/7167424401682500869?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en
Interested in learning more about social media strategy? Drop us a line at [email protected] to see how we can help your brand build your social media presence.