How to Connect with your Audience and Establish your Brand on Social Media's Hottest New Platform
Are you new to TikTok and looking to jumpstart your brand’s account? Is your company a veteran on TikTok and ready to amp up audience engagement? Maybe you’re somewhere in between, or maybe you’re neither and just curious!
TikTok is a quickly growing social media site and a great marketing platform for almost every brand. In order to stand out, it is important to have a solid strategy for your account. In this blog, Hollywood Branded discusses three proven strategies to build a following and connect with an audience over TikTok.
How your Brand can Build a Real Following
At this point, you might be confused as to what TikTok really is. TikTok is a social media app founded in China in 2016. Users can follow friends and TikTok creators of interest and post videos up to one minute long. Other features of the app include liking, saving, sharing, and commenting on videos. The app has been very popular with younger generations and currently has around 500 million active users. One of the greatest things about this social media platform is that just about any TikTok video can go viral and garner the attention of millions of people. When this happens, it can show up on millions of users’ TikTok feeds. Viral videos mean free marketing for your brand without placing or paying for any ads.
If you do choose to place an ad over TikTok, it can be a little pricier compared to Instagram or Facebook. However, TikTok presents a chance for brands to stand out and build a real following. Some of the most successful accounts have gained massive amounts of followers in only a few months by prioritizing personal connection, using humor and relatability, and actualizing audience involvement. Brands that want to grow need to implement at least one of these three strategies in order to get people interested.
Make It Personal
One of the most important strategies to implement is addressing your audience in a personal way. Here, we can take a lesson from a TikTok user who has a social media empire built around him - Tom Felton.
Tom Felton is a 33-year-old actor who is most well known for his side-character role as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series. Felton joined TikTok at the beginning of the quarantine in 2020 and has since then gathered 8 million followers and 105 million likes. A hashtag, “#dracotok,” based on his character has received 10 billion views.
How does Felton maintain such a large crowd? A common theme on his TikTok videos is addressing his audience personally. The actor addresses his followers in the first person as if he were sitting and talking with them. He also responds to his followers’ videos by using a feature on TikTok called a “duet.” Duetting someone’s video allows you to live-react to their TikTok. In addition, he also makes fun challenges for his followers to participate in. His innovative approach of getting TikTok users involved has led him to have more views than there are people on the earth!
Many other popular TikTok users engage followers by using these same strategies. Celebrities with a following and TikTok creators who have built a fanbase for themselves respond to their follower’s videos, address their followers in the first person, and “duet” their videos to show they care. At the core of this, is finding a way to help your followers get engaged in your content and feel a personal connection to you and your brand.
Be Relatable
Another important facet of brand-audience connection is being relatable to your followers. Many brands are finding ways to be relatable to their audience over television commercials, YouTube ads, and Instagram pages. Though TikTok is a new app, the most successful brands on TikTok are already feeding off of relatability.
One of these accounts is The Washington Post. With multiple viral videos and well over 700K followers, The Washington Post lures young TikTok users to their newspaper primarily through relatable and funny TikToks. Most of their videos are on-trend and still have something to do with their product.
Similarly, brands can easily jump on flash trends by using a popular TikTok “sound”. When a brand’s TikTok is linked to a popular sound, there is a higher probability in the TikTok algorithm for a video to show up on more viewer’s feeds. This is a quick way for brands to get visibility and fresh eyes on their product.
Many popular brands on TikTok participate in trending challenges or try to relate to their audience by showing their sense of humor. When TikTok users see that your account has consistently entertaining videos, they will want to come back for more.
Show 'Em How its Done
If they are able, many TikTok brands opt to show the process behind their creations. Whether you show viewers your painting process in a time-lapse, or vlog the remodel of a house in one-minute episodes, showing a but of how you do what you do seems to draw attention to your account.
During Quarantine, Demi Skipper has thrived off of this strategy. Skipper decided to try the “Trade Me” project and document it over TikTok. Her goal was to trade a bobby pin for another object of similar or greater value and keep trading up the object until she could finally trade for a house. Though some of her trades were not successful she engaged her audience with her real-life finds. Skipper has gained 4.6 million followers in less than a year by showing an interesting process!
What does your company do? It’s likely that people will enjoy the process behind your product. According to HupSpot.com, around 54% of consumers would like to see more video content from companies. Documenting and sharing a process is a great way to get your followers involved.
Own Your Content!
At the end of the day, you can choose what kind of strategies you want to implement on your company’s TikTok account. Maybe you want to use all three of these and many more! Maybe your brand has more of a serious voice and you’d rather not venture into the world of humor, but you have a process behind your products that you are really passionate about. Choose what fits best for you! If you would like any more information, or just have more time on your coffee break, here are some links to helpful articles about Tiktok!
- A Quick Guide to TikTok
- TikTok is the Next Big Thing for Brand Marketing
- TikTok should be your Next Social Media Marketing Strategy
- 3 Ways Brands can Run Brand Campaigns on TikTok
- The Power of TikTok
Want to start taking your brand and social media to the next level? Check out our infographic on how to connect your brands with social influencers!
