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How can you make the most out of your small business TikTok presence?
In case you haven’t heard, the short-form video platform is stepping up to challenge Amazon’s e-commerce supremacy by launching TikTok Shop. This innovative feature allows customers to purchase products directly from small and large business accounts alike, increasing their online sales.
This is an exciting development for the platform as it expands its reach to social commerce, beyond just being a video-sharing app. It opens up new opportunities for brands and TikTok creators to monetize their presence on the platform.
Brands, including small businesses, can tap into TikTok’s massive user base and directly promote their products to a highly engaged audience. That, in turn, could lead to significant business growth and increased brand awareness.
Let’s explore how small businesses can leverage TikTok’s potential to achieve their goals.
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Short summary
- TikTok’s user base is massive and varied, spanning across different age groups, interests, and demographics. This diversity presents an excellent opportunity for small businesses to target and expand their customer base by tapping into niches and partnering with influencers who resonate with their brand values.
- TikTok’s features promote high levels of engagement and interaction. For small businesses, participating actively in TikTok conversations can help build a sense of community, foster trust, ensure further audience interactions, and boost sales.
- Joining popular trends can significantly increase a small business’s visibility on the TikTok app. Stay active on the platform and keep an eye on the latest trends.
- Small businesses can use various TikTok ad formats, such as Spark ads and branded hashtag challenges, to reach their target audience effectively. Additionally, integrating relevant and popular hashtags into your content can increase visibility, attract a broader audience, and potentially bring in new customers.
- Repurposing existing videos for TikTok can save time and resources while helping to maintain a consistent content stream. Using social media management tools like SocialBee allows for the planning, scheduling, and sharing of content across different platforms, ensuring a steady presence and engagement with your audience.
Why TikTok is essential for your small business?
When used properly, TikTok can be an effective medium for small companies to communicate with their old and new customers.
Here are a couple of reasons why TikTok is essential for small business owners:
- Diverse audience
- Engagement and interaction
- Other creative opportunities
1. Diverse audience
TikTok’s sprawling user base of 1.6 billion offers a golden opportunity for small businesses to pinpoint and engage with their specific target market.
The platform’s diversity in age, interests, and demographics means there’s a niche for every brand.
From fashion to finance, pets to DIY, TikTok’s wide-ranging content spectrum ensures that once you get started with the platform, you can connect with influencers who resonate with your brand storytelling and values rrand reach an audience tailored to your business needs.
This unique mix makes TikTok one of the best social media channels for small businesses aiming to expand their customer base in a highly targeted manner.
2. Engagement and interaction
TikTok’s features that enable user engagement (share, like, comment, report, duet & stitch) have proven to be a game-changer for small businesses.
The platform’s algorithm customizes the TikTok content stream based on individual user interests, successfully captivating its audience for extended periods.
The platform’s continuous stream of short, engaging videos, complemented by easy sharing and commenting features, makes for a highly interactive environment.
3. Other creative opportunities
Having a TikTok business account gives you the opportunity to showcase your unique products and services on the platform in creative and innovative ways.
For instance, small businesses can engage with their audience through the duet function, adding a collaborative and interactive element to their content.
Companies can also highlight their offerings by sharing live demonstrations, providing DIY tips that use their products, or posting funny clips enhanced with visual effects.
These actions not only present products in an engaging and relatable manner but also help build a community around the brand, making its TikTok marketing strategy more effective and memorable.
5 top small business TikTok marketing tips
As a small company owner, TikTok’s vast reach may help your brand recognition substantially.
Here are some TikTok tips for small businesses:
- Participate in trends
- Leverage micro-influencer collaborations
- Take advantage of relevant and popular TikTok hashtags
- Run TikTok ads
- Repurpose your videos and share them on TikTok
1. Participate in trends
People love trending content; that’s why it’s trending in the first place, right? One of the most effective ways to gain visibility on TikTok is to participate in popular trends. From dance challenges to comedic skits, trends on TikTok are guaranteed to capture the attention of millions of users worldwide.
To be able to join TikTok trends, it’s important to stay active on the platform and keep an eye on the latest challenges and viral videos. Pay attention to the “For You” page to see what content is gaining popularity and what the current trending sounds are.
Following TikTok accounts from similar niches and competitors and engaging with their content can also help you get a sense of what’s trending in the TikTok community. Once you know which trend to jump on, create video content that aligns with it. You can follow the trend to the letter or, better yet, put your unique spin on it.
Here’s how Taco Bell jumped on a popular TikTok trend:
You can add your personal touch via unique editing techniques or a witty caption to help you gain attention and make your videos more memorable.
2. Leverage micro-influencer collaborations
Micro-influencers are social media personalities with a smaller, yet highly engaged following, typically ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands of followers.
For small businesses marketing budgets, forming partnerships with these micro-influencers often proves to be a more cost-effective strategy than engaging with larger TikTok influencers or celebrities.
Here’s how to leverage TikTok influencer marketing in your strategy:
- Research hashtags and trends: Begin by exploring popular hashtags and trends relevant to your industry on TikTok. This approach helps pinpoint users who are already producing content that resonates with your niche.
- Evaluate influencers: Carefully assess potential micro-influencers by looking at their follower count, engagement rates, and the quality of their content. This evaluation is important for understanding their impact and ensuring they align with your brand values and target demographic.
- Initiate engagement: Reach out to potential micro-influencers with a personalized message. Express your interest in their content and propose a collaboration that benefits both parties. Alternatively, consider using an email finder tool to obtain their contact details and follow up with a thoughtful email proposal.
Incorporating TikTok influencers with smaller audiences but high engagement into your video strategy can significantly amplify your brand’s visibility.
Micro-influencer @paola.ochoaa above, for instance, is a great fit to create user-generated content for small business Frame, given her fashion-focused content.
3. Take advantage of relevant and popular TikTok hashtags
TikTok hashtags serve as a powerful mechanism for small businesses to amplify their presence.
Integrating relevant and trending hashtags into your engaging video content can significantly increase your videos’ visibility, attracting a broader audience and potentially new customers.
Here’s how you can use TikTok hashtags for your business:
- Select appropriate hashtags: Effective use of hashtags involves targeting those that your desired audience follows. While creativity is encouraged, ensuring some alignment with the content and the hashtag’s general theme or existing audience expectation is beneficial.
- Discover popular hashtags: Use third-party tools for hashtag research or manually scout for popular hashtags. This process involves observing the hashtags used in trending videos and selecting those that resonate with your brand and content strategy.
- Incorporate hashtags in captions and descriptions: Using the chosen hashtags in your video captions and descriptions not only helps the TikTok algorithm categorize your content but also enhances its recommendations to users with aligned interests.
A good hashtag strategy is part of your TikTok SEO, as it improves your chances of appearing as a search result related to your niche.
Check out these hashtags used by digital planning agency The Werk Life to boost its small business TikTok account growth:
To maximize the reach and longevity of your content, it’s important to use a mix of trending and evergreen hashtags. This will ensure that your content remains relevant and visible over time, differentiating you from other small businesses.
PRO TIP
With SocialBee’s Hashtag Generator, your TikTok post captions automatically trigger hashtag suggestions, no need to enter keywords manually. Just start writing your post, and let the tool recommend hashtags that match your content.
Want to keep your favorites? Add them to a hashtag collection for quick access later.
With SocialBee you can create TikTok hashtag collections and organize them in different categories.
4. Run TikTok ads
TikTok provides different types of ads that businesses can use alongside their organic content to effectively reach their target audience and promote their products or services. All you need is a TikTok Ads manager account to start running your paid advertising. You can use it to create individual campaigns or an ad group.
The most popular paid ad format is the Spark in-feed ads, which appear seamlessly in users’ content feeds as they scroll through the app. These ads usually last up to 15 seconds and can be in the form of videos or images with captions.
Here’s an example of how in-feed TikTok ads work:
Spark TopView ads, on the other hand, appear at the top of the For You TikTok feed and can be up to 60 seconds long.
Brand takeover ads, meanwhile, are short, snappy images or video ads that last at least three seconds. These TikTok for business ads give brands a 100% share of voice on the day they’re featured.
That means no other brand takeover ad will appear before a user on the day, making these ads powerful marketing tools.
Here’s how businesses on TikTok can spread a brand takeover ad:
Remember what we said about how popular and relevant hashtags can boost your content visibility? Well, there’s another type of hashtag you might want to use, this time, in TikTok advertising: the sponsored hashtag.
You can create your own hashtag and start your own branded hashtag challenge. Encourage TikTok users to participate by creating videos and using the sponsored hashtag.
Guess is an example of a brand that leverages this type of TikTok video ads for their denim product line. It’s not a small business, but you can take a cue from its popular sponsored hashtag challenge, #InMyDenim.
As part of your TikTok advertising, you can also create your own branded effects. Make your own branded stickers or filters that users can incorporate into their own content in order to build excitement. You can also integrate this type of ad into your branded hashtag challenge.
Of course, you still need to consider your budget before setting up your TikTok ad campaign. From all these ad formats, TikTok Spark ads are probably the best for small businesses that are starting out with limited budgets.
Check with TikTok’s advertising platform or contact a TikTok for business consultant for specific pricing details and options that align with your budget and business goals.
5. Repurpose your videos and share them on TikTok
Repurposing existing videos can save you time and effort in content creation. When you don’t want to create content from scratch, you can give a fresh spin to your existing videos. Download vertical videos from another social media platform, whether they be Instagram Reels or YouTube shorts, and then share them on TikTok.
Here’s how to refresh your existing videos for TikTok:
- Use video editing effects: Experiment with various video editing effects to find what best suits your brand’s style. Popular choices include slow motion, time-lapse, and thematic filters. These can transform the feel of your video, aligning it more closely with your aesthetic and the expectations of your TikTok followers.
- Incorporate music: Considering that 50% of users find TikTok videos with music more engaging, integrating trending sounds from the commercial music library can significantly increase the appeal of your content. Audio adds a layer of fun and can make your videos stand out in the feed, attracting new viewers and potential customers.
- Decide which types of video content to repurpose: Look into repurposing bits from webinars, podcasts, or live events. Such content, when edited into shorter, more engaging clips, can provide valuable insights or entertainment to your TikTok audience.
- Adjust the size/length: TikTok videos should ideally be short and to the point. Aim for 15 to 60 seconds to keep your audience engaged. Ensure your repurposed content fits within these parameters, trimming or segmenting longer videos as necessary.
- Reshare frequency: It’s a must to strike a balance. While resharing popular content can improve engagement, doing so too frequently may lead to audience fatigue. A good rule of thumb is to wait several weeks or even months before resharing, depending on your content volume and variety.
By exploring different ways to repurpose your content, you don’t just save resources but also create opportunities to present your brand in a fresh light.
PRO TIP
Using a social media management tool like SocialBee allows your small business to plan, create, and schedule posts across all popular social media platforms, ensuring your content strategy remains uninterrupted, even during the busiest periods.
Try SocialBee to keep your TikTok strategy consistent.
Frequently asked questions
Ready to use TikTok for business success?
TikTok has evolved as an essential platform for small businesses because of its enormous user base, creative format options, and engagement and interaction features.
As such, TikTok can easily help small businesses enhance their digital marketing efforts and reach a broader audience.
You learned five tips for marketing on TikTok to follow for the best results. Now it’s time to put them to work. Continue to create engaging content and stay true to your approach. With time, your small business TikTok profile and your small business will reap the rewards.
Because consistency is key when building a TikTok presence, you’ll need a tool to ensure that your posting schedule and your content strategy are always up-to-date. Start your 14-day SocialBee trial today and bring your small business closer to TikTok success!
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About the author: Owen Baker is a content marketer for Voila Norbert, an online email verification tool. He has spent most of the last decade working online for a range of marketing companies. When he’s not busy writing, you can find him in the kitchen mastering new dishes.
