TikTok is the latest rage of our digital generation which has successfully found a steady increase in the number of TikTokers annually. With countless viral videos to hashtags, TikTok remains a trendsetter in the social media world which makes it a great place for an online business to push its brand and reach a tremendously wide audience organically.

So let’s get into the nitty-gritty of it and talk about what TikTok is and how you can utilise it for your online business.

What is TikTok?

While many of you might already know the answer to this, for those of you who don’t, TikTok is a video-based social networking platform that gained popularity in 2017 after being launched the previous year. The platform has amassed more and more users every year and was the most downloaded app in 2020 with 1 billion annual users globally. So yes, the platform is very popular and if you have an online business, TikTok is a great platform for you to gather an audience for your niche.

How is TikTok different from the rest?

Unlike popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, TikTok is a completely video-based platform, each user has a personalised feed of short videos of up to 3 minutes. The feed is personalised by taking into account the user’s interest in various types of videos they like and comment on. Users can also create their own short videos and post them for the world to watch.

TikTok is hugely centred around the music and audio used over videos. It has a huge music library that can be used over videos to make them more catchy. There are some tracks that are trending and using such audio tracks can also increase the likelihood of your videos going viral.

This is why you don’t need to have an insane amount of followers to go viral. It’s easier for you to go viral on TikTok than on any other platform which is the key to the organic growth of your brand on the app.

Consistency is key

It's one thing to post a killer video that amasses thousands of likes and comments but it's an absolutely different ball game to post consistently without compromising on the quality of content. Consistency is a general rule of thumb for all social media platforms, not just TikTok. There will be times when a video that you have high expectations with gets little engagement but another video that you don't have high hopes with blows up! So decide the days you're going to post and stick with it.

TikTok Trends

Jumping on TikTok trends is one of the best ways to get noticed. You must always be on the lookout for trending videos. The best place to find what’s trending on TikTok is under the “Discover” tab. You will find various trending audio and topics. You can take it a notch up by following #trendalert to find what’s trending.

It’s important to filter out unwanted trends and stick to relevant ones for your business. The best way to do that is by paying more attention to the For You page. If you repeatedly spot a particular audio every 5 videos, it’s highly likely that it is trending and it’s probably the best time to create something out of it. Mix and match, spend more time on the app and you will quickly get a hang of how it works.

Genuine Content

Genuinity is at the core of TikTok. While creating content, one of the first steps in creating a content strategy is to be candid with your audience. People use TikTok because they love the connection they feel with what they see. They relate to what they watch and that’s why they keep coming back. Your content needs to be direct and have an element of storytelling or entertainment, something that grips your audience on an emotional level. That’s one of the most efficient tricks to go viral on TikTok and gain engagement on your online store.

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Highest Engagement Rate

TikTok offers the highest engagement rate compared to other major social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The main reason why this happens is because of a big difference in how these platforms push content.

On Facebook and Instagram, when you post something it is mostly shown to people who follow you which gives you an engagement that depends on the number of followers you have. On the other hand, TikTok pushes your content irrespective of who follows you based on the kind of audience that is likely to enjoy watching the video that you posted. This algorithm brings in a relevant audience and boosts the engagement rate that you can’t get on other platforms unless you have a lot of followers.

Conclusion

For an online business, social media presence is of utmost importance. Gaining followers on Instagram and likes on a Facebook page organically can take a lot of time, especially if you're just starting out. Then too, going viral without having gathered a huge number of followers is very rare. That's where TikTok truly shines. Its unique algorithm doesn't care whether you have a hundred followers or a million. If you post creative videos constantly, it won't be long before you start gaining an audience that not only loves your videos but can also be nudged to take action and buy from you.

Want to learn more about growing your eCommerce business efficiently? Watch our experts talk about ways to combine organic and paid reach on TikTok for your eCommerce. 

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