TikTok is relatively new among the social media platforms, yet, it is hugely popular, and its growth is exponential. TikTok was formerly known as Musical.ly but was taken over by ByteDance in 2018.
Contrary to popular notion, TikTok is 100% wholly owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company. Although it is Chinese owned, TikTok isn’t available in China because of censorship restrictions. Instead, they have Douyin for the Chinese market, which operate on separate servers from TikTok.
Basically, TikTok is a short-form video creation and sharing app, with videos only as short as 15 seconds. Videos are wide-ranging, from magic tricks, to funny memes and dance. Editing has been simplified, with users choosing from a broad array of special effects and filters, sound bytes and songs.
Cool Facts About TikTok for Business Owners
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- In a research report from Sensor Tower (January 2020), it showed that TikTok was downloaded more than 738 million times, and grossed $177 million worldwide in 2019.
- TikTok is highly addictive as reported by Oberlo. Users spend an average of 52 minutes per day on TikTok, with 9 out of 10 using it several times a day. This is especially significant to businesses because with the right content, they are guaranteed to be seen by their audience.
- According to Medium, there are over 800 million active users as of January 2020. And in the US alone, there are over 30 million users.
- In the same Medium report, 70% of users are between the ages of 16-24. Don’t ignore this group. They have money to spend, and they also have the power to influence their parents on where to dine out, travel, or choose which consumer items to buy.
How To Boost Your TikTok Likes
Don’t go unnoticed, boost Your TikTok Likes with these five cool tricks;
- Creative and authentic content.
The GenZ audience wants variety, they want to always see new content, and they want it fast. The key to getting noticed is to come up with catchy, funny and quirky videos. You need to get your audience hooked within the first three seconds, otherwise, they will just scroll over your video and you don’t want that. Make sure your humor gets through.
Don’t just create content for the sake of posting. Your content must be in line with your brand and goals. Be authentic.
You don’t really have to post on a daily basis. Start off with posting at least once a week, or every other day. But don’t let months pass by without any posts, you will definitely lose followers.
Content creation is so easy with TikTok. TikTok is successful in part because they make use of localized content. They run local contests, and use localized hashtags based on local trends. This way, users already get instant ideas for their content.
- Maximize hashtags.
Using relevant and trending hashtags will feature your videos to users who follow the same hashtags. This already increases your visibility to a bigger audience. Hashtags are one way of finding content, and many people rely and follow hashtags.
Hashtags should also be relevant to your campaign. Further, making use of trending hashtags in your line of business will also give you a glimpse into activities of your competitors, providing insights for future content, and campaigns that have been successful with them.
Timing is also important when you use hashtags. Capitalize on current trends because you are sure that your audiences have that on top of mind already.
- Sponsor challenges.
Challenges have proven to attract a wide following. Several companies have shown considerable success by sponsoring challenges. One such company is Samsung when they launched their Galaxy A smartphone. They used the hashtag challenge #GalaxyA that resulted in the creation of videos that received over 30 million views.
Another brand that had success with this was Home Depot, which is a company more popular with the older set. By simply using #HomeDepot on TikTok and using a catchy tune just made for them, they got 62 million views and raised brand awareness from the GenZ audience.
- Engage with followers.
As with other social media platforms, the key to getting more likes and followers is to reply to comments, answer direct messages and questions, and acknowledge mentions of your business. To get extra mileage, leave funny or amusing comments on videos of influencers and popular bloggers that your audience follows.
Engagement is important because it builds rapport with your audience. It humanizes your business, and increases brand awareness and strengthens customer support.
- Get a boost from auto-liker apps.
There are several TikTok auto liker apps available. This is an option that you can consider if you are new to TikTok and growing your audience.
Just search for the service that best meets your needs. There are a few that offer the service for free, while most charge a certain fee. Be sure to check reviews before buying. You can pay a minimal fee and get as little as 100 likes or go up to 2,500 likes or even 20,000 likes. It all depends on your budget and goal. You just need to choose the posts that you want to boost.
Conclusion
Businesses stand to gain with a presence on TikTok. There is a big opportunity for businesses to grow their brand on TikTok, coupled with TikTok’s innovative streak.
Your brand doesn’t necessarily have to be for the young. Consider the Washington Post which has a presence on TikTok, and was even one of the early brand users. You would think that their posts would be dry and serious. But they use TikTok in an entirely different way, by showing their fun-loving and quirky side. They post behind-the-scenes videos about the newsroom and content in a way that appeals to the GenZ audience. And it has been working. To date, they have more than 374,000 followers and over 19 million likes on TikTok.
So analyze your business. What side of your business would appeal to the GenZ market, how can you present your business in a fun and appealing way to them? Check what kind of content your market is interacting with and build from there.
