Finding new creative ways to reach audiences and generate real value is the holy grail for any marketer. That’s why short-form mobile video entertainment platform TikTok is a proposition too good to miss. Not only is it a place where quality content meets a huge audience, and highly engaged users are spending increasing amounts of time, it’s also relatively uncluttered with advertising, offering brands a more significant share of voice. Ads are entirely video-based, meaning they blend seamlessly with the app’s native content and never compromise the user experience.
TikTok is fast becoming a must in many marketers’ media plans. Here we explain why.
An interest-based algorithm that fuels marketing success
One of the things that makes TikTok unique and highly valuable to brands is that it runs on a content graph, rather than a social graph. In layman’s terms, this differentiates it from social media as the content users see is not limited to that created by the people they follow or their social spheres. Instead, the TikTok algorithm serves content based entirely on users’ interests, and the videos they watch and engage with.
Jennifer Lopez recently experienced the merits of the algorithm’s ability to rapidly scale content based on user interests at first hand. In March this year, the singer posted a video on TikTok, it received a staggering 161 million views from just 10.2 million followers. Why? TikTok can serve content to hundreds of millions of feeds based on what users like, rather than who they like. J.Lo’s follower numbers made no difference to the video’s reach.
This is excellent news for individuals and brands looking to build a presence on TikTok, as it makes reaching a mass audience surprisingly simple. As an open platform where anyone can be discovered, the flow of content is not slowed or obstructed by invite-only groups or the need for followers. The best way to get discovered is to create content aligned with your target audiences’ interests – gaming, beauty, fashion, education, comedy and sports are some popular ones. By playing to these categories a brand instantly becomes much more visible, as content tailored to a target audience’s interests scales naturally on TikTok.
Another way to amplify your brand’s visibility on TikTok is to pay close attention to trends. Selfridges and GymShark both understand this. These brands create organic content that capitalises on the virality of trending hashtags (#OutfitChallenge or #10TouchChallenge) that appear on the discovery page, to put themselves in front of millions of eyeballs – a simple and effective way to create enormous reach.
SOURCE: Chris Boger
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