Making TikTok Work For Your Brand

If the pandemic was good for anything, it was undoubtedly good for TikTok. It skyrocketed as one of the most popular platforms, coming in close, just under Instagram.

During lockdown 1.0, who remembers seeing viral videos of dancing, banana bread tutorials and the perfect lip syncs?

Even us, at Kitch, we were curious to see if TikTok was a platform for us and yes, you guessed it. We’re on TikTok! (go on, drop us a follow here)

TikTok has since grown into a versatile platform. From what started as comedic videos, has since grown to brands and creators using TikTok to educate.

The hashtag #LearnOnTikTok is a great way to get started and it currently has 63B views! People are craving educational content more than ever so you can be rest assured this # will stay put.

Are you on TikTok?

If you’re a brand and you’re not on TikTok, you might want to reconsider.

People’s businesses have found they have thrived simply by going viral on TikTok. Take this account for example @TerrazzoParazo. She started a small business, making Terrazzo products, posting videos and this one below, went viral with 1.9M views!

Making TikTok Work For Your Brand

Due to the easy click-through feature to the Instagram account, followers were directed here to purchase products. She has since racked up 93.2k followers on TikTok, 14.3k followers on Instagram and a total of 1.1M likes on her videos.

You can go viral for anything

And it’s not just a product business. This Dog Trainer @SouthendDogTraining has managed to rack up 575.1k on TikTok and 138k on Instagram.

His business has simply grown from his popular TikTok videos meaning that he has gone from doing local dog training in Essex to hiring a team and offering an online subscription service for Dog owners nationwide, giving them access to valuable training videos and advice.

It really can work for anyone.

How to do it

Of course, doing this means you need to go viral in the first place but with TikToks brilliant Algorithm, it’s easier than all the other social platforms, to have your 1 minute of fame.

• Use a viral sound underneath your video. TikTok has a feature where you can look through the sounds that are trending on the app. If you want to do an informative video with little sound, you can still add a viral sound underneath, minimising the music so it’s faint and then maximising your voice. Then when users search for this sound, your video will come up.

Check out our example below, using the viral ‘Oh No’ sound.

• Use an eye-catching cover photo. If users have come across your feed, you want them to watch as many of your videos, therefore creating an eye-catching cover photo means that user can quickly decipher what the video is about and is more likely to watch it.

Notice how instantly you see ‘Top 5 Social Media Mistakes’ on our cover photos. Immediately it’s going to encourage users who are interested in our topic, to click and watch the video.

• Utilise Hashtags. Hashtags like #LearnOnTikTok (mentioned above) and #ForYou have over 6000B videos (!!!) so you know they’re popular. You can also search for videos that are niche to your video and these are still popular. #Marketing has over 2.5B views. Stick to 5 hashtags a post and also look at what # is trending and use it on your post to push you further up the algorithm.

• Be succinct. The majority of people that come across your video, are ones that are scrolling on the For You Page (similar to explore page on Instagram). If your video doesn’t catch their attention to start, they’re likely to scroll. Visual captions are a good way to do this. Similar to a cover photo, the visual captions immediately show the user what the video is about so they know whether they want to commit to watching it.

This how @SouthEndDogTraining has gotten his big following. His visual caption of what the video is about immediately grabs our attention and encourages us and others to watch. Because let’s be honest, we all want to stop our dog from pulling!

What can I post?

The possibilities are endless if you’re a small business. Search similar topics and business ventures on the app to get inspiration. Still, stuck? We’ve got some ideas below:

• Are you a product-led small business? Perhaps you could do a video of packaging your product, or where you started and where you are now. Maybe even a list of suppliers you use to help others in your position.

• Are you a hair or beauty salon? You could look at doing tutorials on yourself while people are at home. You could do a salon tour to excite people for when you reopen. You could do a before and after using a product. A video that went viral was using heat defence on a piece of bread and toasting it to prove.

• Are you an online food shop? You could also do the packaging process, or the top items you would recommend. Are you health led? Do the top 5 benefits of a particular health food/meal. Videos that do particularly well are recipes and so you could look at doing recipe tutorial or things to make with a particular ingredient.

• Clothing shop? Show us your top items or pair items together to give your users some outfit inspo.

So there you have it, TikTok really is an ‘anything goes’ platform, meaning you can think outside the box to get your brand noticed, and if you’re really pro, you could even start a trend.