Embracing TikTok culture
From what we can see today, TikTok is the future. Not because it is objectively better than Facebook or Instagram in every way or something like that, but because it is the social network app used by Gen Z, the generation that is slowly entering the job market and filling up universities everywhere. That is, the generation that will in the next few years start to get their own income and buy their own stuff.
Which means that, if you want to target today’s teens and young adults, you also have to invest into TikTok marketing. And that comes with its own set of challenges. You can’t just throw a traditionally-made well-produced video into every user’s face and expect it to produce leads. You have to take part in the TikTok culture, learn how it works, and make it work for you. And that is not exactly simple.
TikTok for Business
If you even try to go after the traditional approach of buying ad spaces on TikTok, you are going to see it won’t be as easy as you’d like. The “TikTok for Business” page already greets you with the saying: “Don’t make ads. Make TikToks”. Making ads in TikTok is all about not making your ads look like ads. They need to fit in, otherwise they will just be ignored. Read more articles: Emojis and Memes
Scrolling down, you will see what it is about: “Activate Interactivity”. Advertising in TikTok is all about interacting with tiktokers, and making them like you and what you publish so much that they will spread it around. It is about getting close to your audience and becoming their friend.
And to do that, the TikTok for Business app grants you access to a wide range of tools, enabling you create and edit videos to be published in the platform, create and publish your own filters, do livestreams, as well as promote your videos so they appear on people’s feed or as soon as when they open the app or their feed, while also providing you the tools to select exactly which demographics you want to reach.
Going viral
The best way to get the attention of TikTok users (and even from users of other social networks when done right) is by going viral. That is, creating such good content that users themselves will share them with other users and create a chain reaction of sharing, liking and hearting.
This is very hard to do, but is obviously incredibly rewarding. You need to make something interesting, innovative, or very funny in order to get into people’s hearts, and then let them do their magic and spread it around. And everything needs to fit into, at most, a 15 second video. But the shorter it is, the more likely it is for people to engage with it.
And if you manage to get major TikTok influencers to take part in it, even better.
Challenges
One of the most common ways to go viral is to make challenges. Challenges are, as the name imply, some task that you challenge people to do and show on TikTok, followed by a hashtag that represents the challenge.
Most challenges stay within TikTok and get shared around, but some spread into other social networks, either because they are interesting, challenging, for a good cause, or are just so bad that they shouldn’t even have begun. An example of a good one was the Ice Bucket Challenge, made to raise money for patients of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and a bad one, the “Corona Challenge”, which involved, well, licking seats of public toilets.
As much as a good challenge can make your company soar, a really bad challenge can also break it overnight. It is very important that all the people involved in making your TikTok ad campaigns know what they are doing and know TikTok culture really well.
If you do know what you are doing, you are bound to reap the benefits. It looks like TikTok is going to be the social network of the future, so the earlier you are a part of it, the better.