Written by Lisa Beauty, writer, InVideo.

Over the years, social media has taken the centre stage in the digital world. Brands were quick to adapt to this trend and come up with innovative ways of presenting themselves on social media. TikTok is a new addition to the social media family. Initially, it started as a platform to share funny, short videos to entertain one’s followers. In just a few years, the platform has established itself as a mainstream social media portal.

With more than 800 million active users, TikTok presents marketing professionals with an excellent platform to promote their products. Considering that Gen Zers dominate the TikTok demographics, brand marketing is especially useful for youthful brands. Before you start incorporating TikTok in your marketing plans, try to understand if your target audience is active on this platform.

The present situation suggests that TikTok has a lot of untapped audience potential. To make the most of this platform, you need to strategise your TikTok video content and plan it for your target group. Here are some tips that will help you in your journey.

Keep it Fun

While TikTok has evolved as a social media platform, its primary focus is on entertaining content. A look at the viral TikTok videos shows that 30 percent of them had humorous content. Memes, satire, sarcastic videos, videos with funny voiceovers are some of the concepts that you can explore while preparing TikTok content.

Understand that most TikTok users visit the platform for recreation. If you can create hilarious content, they are likely to enjoy it and share it with their peers.

Leverage the Power of Music

Music is a major contributor to the widespread popularity of videos. Studies show that 80 percent of the popular TikTok videos have music. Be careful with your choice of music and ensure that it helps to set the theme for your video. You can leverage dramatic music to emphasise a point or to win back the viewer’s attention.

Strategic use of music can help boost the retention abilities of your viewers. For example, a catchy jingle with your product name can help boost your brand visibility. Of all the different genres of music, upbeat music is the most popular in TikTok videos.

Be Authentic in Your Videos

A major advantage of TikTok video marketing is that you do not have to perfect the video filming and editing. TikTok promotes authentic videos that do not beat about the bush. Try to keep the video content informal and candid. Although TikTok allows you to post 60-second videos, videos that are shorter than 15 seconds have higher chances of getting viral.

Format Your Video

While you do not need to invest in advanced editing of TikTok videos, make sure that you format the content before uploading. As far as possible, try to create vertical videos. Large black bars appear on the top and bottom of horizontal TikTok videos and this compromises with the visual appeal of your content.

Keep Up with The Trends

TikTok is a dynamic platform, and you need to keep up with the latest trends. Videos that comment on current affairs issues or viral memes have a higher chance of being shared.  For example, the recent incident where a popular footballer asked for an aerated drinks bottle to be replaced by water served as context to several popular TikTok videos.

Often, viral YouTube content provides fodder for TikTok videos. If you are keen on gaining TikTok popularity, you need to keep yourself abreast with the latest happenings of the digital world.

Organise Hashtag Challenges

Most TikTok users love creating videos and you can encourage them to come up with content around a given hashtag. You can also ask them to create videos with your products. Today, about 90 percent of TikTok videos have product placement and you can encourage this in your circle. If you look at how brands are leveraging TikTok, you will find that the Hashtag challenge is something that most brands employ.

When your followers publish videos with the product and hashtag, they promote your brand in their respective circles. As a chain reaction starts, more people create videos on your hashtag. Over time such measures help you get viral on TikTok and gain digital visibility. For the best results from your hashtag challenges, organise such challenges only after you build a follower base.

Be Active on TikTok

The key to earning credibility in TikTok is being proactive in your efforts. Whenever you post a video, try to be the first one to comment on it. The comment should be witty or an open-ended question that encourages people to respond.

Other than organising your hashtag challenges, it is a good idea to participate in challenges organised by others. That way, when you create interesting videos on a theme, you will catch the attention of the public. Also, whenever a follower comments on your video, be proactive in your response.

Indulge in Influencer Collaboration

25 percent of the videos in TikTok feature an influencer or micro-influencer. Try to identify the celebrities who are popular in your industry area. Reach out to such people with ideas for collaborations.

Understand that the influencers are busy people and get hundreds of collaborations requests every day. Not all of them will respond to your request. Hence try to pitch your idea to multiple TikTok influencers and have your options open.

Optimise Your TikTok Content

If you are keen on maximising the marketing results from TikTok, you need to optimise your captions. While TikTok allows you to post captions up to 150 characters long, try to restrict your captions to not more than 87 characters. Most of the viral TikTok content has shorter captions.

Hashtags are an integral part of your TikTok strategy and help direct the videos to the correct audience. 87.3 percent of TikTok videos have hashtags. However, you need to understand that hashtags come in the video description, and their overuse will compromise the description length. The most popular TikTok videos have 3.26 hashtags on average.

Despite all the above measures, there is no guaranteed path to getting viral on TikTok. Since you never know if a video will get viral, the safest way is to post multiple contents. The most popular brands on TikTok post new videos 3.52 times every week.

As a brand, you should come up with a posting schedule to accommodate the different types of TikTok content. Such planning will let you space out your videos and offer a variety of content to your followers. Over time, your unique video ideas will let you stand out from the crowd and establish an indomitable TikTok brand presence.

[Image – Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash]