THE PLATFORM WITH GREAT POWER
TikTok — Powerful for Marketing?
Here’s why TikTok is a must-use for anyone wanting to spread their brand.
TikTok- the platform once popularly known as Musical.ly, rebranded to TikTok in August of 2018, has been taking over the app stores, with the app itself having over 800 million active users. Its demographic is primarily 16–24-year-olds, and with a million videos viewed per day, its clear to see why both content creators and brands would want to be on the platform.
On TikTok, a user can choose between 15, 30 or 60-second videos, in which they can either record their own sound or have a sound overlaid from the app (which has a huge selection of songs and random ‘memes’). And this extremely short-form content can grab millions and millions of young eyes, making it a great platform to market both oneself and one’s brand.
In this post, I’m going to be looking at how TikTok can be useful for both the individual, and the brand level.
The Individual
Charli D’Amelio. A name that, just a year ago was not heard of at all, but now at just 16, she’s one of the biggest influencers on TikTok, having racked up a massive 67.7 million followers at the time of writing.
This is probably the best example of how someone can easily skyrocket to fame on TikTok. Last year, the D’Amelio’s were an ordinary family, just like any other, and now, they have a collective TikTok following of 117M followers.
Wow.
In a matter of months, their lives transformed forever, and their influence has gotten to such a substantial level to the point where (according to The Rolling Stone) Charli can charge anywhere from $25-$40k USD per sponsored post. And it’s clear to see why brands would be willing to spend so much money just to get 30 seconds on her platform.
Tiktok has greatly reduced the friction when it comes to liking or sharing a post, and this is why it has that great viral potential. In addition to this, like with any other platform, trends ebb and flow through the app, with various hashtags and sounds that relate to the trend being present, meaning that if one uses those hashtags, and uses the sound for that particular trend, they too could end up on the “For You Page”, and there, if their post gets traction, they are given exposure to users who like their content. And this cycle continues. People can quickly build followings of >100k followers, and if you operate within a niche (ie: tech/health/etc) you can find your audience and continue to grow.
We make it easy for you to discover and create your own original videos by providing easy-to-use tools to view and capture your daily moments. Take your videos to the next level with special effects, filters, music, and more. — TikTok
What I’m trying to say is that, at an individual level, TikTok is a fantastic platform with great leverage for personal brand growth, and its no wonder that each day, more and more creators who are established on other platforms jump on to TikTok — there’s a whole new audience to get the attention of.
The Brand
In addition to the individuals who use TikTok, countless brands have established a presence on TikTok. In particular, I’m going to be looking at the account from The Washington Post.
Something cool about TikTok with brands is that the style of the content, as well as the length of it, allows for brands to take a little bit more of a relaxed and fun approach with the content it uploads, which in my opinion helps the brand connect with the users on a more personal level.
Take The Washington Post. They are known for (naturally) their news, with a serious approach to delivering the new stories of the day to those around the world.
As you can see above, there’s a wildly different style of content between the two, with the Twitter content being strictly news, whereas the TikTok content is much more relaxed, with funny memes, staff jokes, and TikTok trends, which are most of the time not related to the news and current issues of the world.
Yet, hundreds of thousands of people still follow the TikTok page — why? It’s because of how relatable the Washington Post’s content is. And that right there is why TikTok is a quick and easy platform to build customer relations on. It doesn’t have to be formal and can be more relatable to the consumers compared to a platform like Twitter.
Subsequently, trends are something that brands can use to their advantage. If they can get a trend and a hashtag ‘challenge’ going, the brand is able to reach wide audiences across TikTok. A good example of this would be the #inmydenim challenge that was created by Guess. This challenge simply involved the users showing the various ways in which they wear their Guess jeans. Guess collaborated with influencers to get the trend going, and soon they reached upwards of 40 million views across the platform, which is incredible reach for an ad campaign, and these videos continue to receive engagement on the platform.
So, there you have it — TikTok is a fantastic platform for both an individual’s brand or a larger, corporate brand to reach eyes across the world. As to whether TikTok will last the test of time, that is yet to be seen — but for now, TikTok is a platform that everyone who wants to be heard should go on.
Use TikTok here for iOS, here for Android and here for desktop.
