With over three billion downloads and watch time that exceeds both Facebook and YouTube, there is so much opportunity for businesses on TikTok. But how are you supposed to stand out, grow your business with TikTok and really be profitable? That’s what today’s article is all about.
1. Establish Authority
Number one – you want to establish yourself as an authority. A credible one and a trustworthy one at that! But how can you do that? By creating videos that genuinely bring value. Yes, there are those who dance on the platform and point to little text bubbles, but to be honest with you, we don’t really want you to dance. We would much rather see what you actually do and hear your actual voice! You can do this in a few different ways.
The first is you could answer a question that you are getting all the time. If you’re getting a question more than twice, then you absolutely should do a keyboard shortcut and internal training and/or create content around that.
You could also come up with a list of some sort, like how we’re doing with this post! Did you see how we said “Five Tips,” so that way you knew what to expect? Think about how you could attach that to your business. Maybe it is your five favourite products. Maybe it’s five things that you wish you would have known when (blank). A list is a great way to keep people engaged, but also keep it simple. Maybe you do have 97 ideas, but let’s shorten that to less than 10. That way, we can keep them wanting more, make a part two, or bring that idea back at a later time.
And then lastly our favourite way is what we like to call a recipe. Even if you’re not a food business or chef, it could be a recipe for success or maybe it’s the recipe for disaster. But again, taking people on a journey of how you went from point A to point Z. You can also showcase authority by showing your current or previous work. Whether you were featured on a media outlet, on a stage or with a celebrity, anything that shows the bigness of who you are but bringing it to a mobile-friendly state.
2. Establish Familiarity
Onto point number two on how to grow your business with TikTok. And that is that we want to see your face! Whether you are the face of your business or your product is the face of your business. We need to establish one very crystal clear face to be able to establish familiarity. Why is this important? Because on TikTok, the default feed is not the Following feed (meaning everyone you follow), it’s the For You feed. Meaning content that is quite literally customised for you and your watching habits for that particular time period.
You’re guaranteed to get put in front of people who have no idea who you are. If you’re constantly seeing different recipes, people, backgrounds, locations then it’s hard for people to associate one thing to the next and back to you and your profile. So we want to encourage you to establish the face of your business.
If you’re thinking “who am I to be the face?” That’s exactly the reason why! TikTok loves to root for the underdog, loves a success story, loves to feel like they’re growing with you. So you need to and should be the face of your brand!
3. Promote Additional Content Channels or Projects
Number three, cross promotion. If you are already established somewhere else whether it’s a website or a podcast or another social media platform, TikTok could actually be a great vessel to promote something else that you have going on. Now you might think that’s counterintuitive but that’s actually one of the biggest pieces of advice we give on any platform. And that is where do you want that platform to take you? What is your objective?
We’re actually seeing TikTok being a great place to promote outside projects. As of right now, inside of TikTok on your profile there is a direct click for you to be able to promote your Instagram or YouTube. We’re also seeing it being a great place of promotion when it comes to podcasts for people to search for you and want more. It’s also a place where you could potentially preview a product that you have specifically on your website or some type of an email opt-in or a free download.
So for example, you might have a media kit template on my website. You could use TikTok to give five pieces of advice on how to create a media kit. And in doing so, you could show off your own media kit template. And in the middle you could say, “Hey, if you like this go ahead to the link in my bio, because I have a download for you to be able to create this step-by-step!”
4. Drive TikTok’s Traffic to Your Site
Speaking of link in bio – that is our next tip – absolutely take advantage of that. You do need 1000 followers to get your link in bio. But once you have that feature we encourage you to actually make your bio itself actionable. Your bio lives on top of where the link in bio lives. And so we would encourage you to potentially have a little finger pointing down or something actionable, where you are directly calling people to click on that link that takes them somewhere very specific.
Now you might be used to some type of a tree situation where you have a link that takes people to multiple links. That’s totally okay. We do want to advise you to find somebody who is not signed into TikTok to test that link out and make sure that it works. Because sometimes some of those sites don’t always play nice with TikTok, for whatever reason.
5. Connect With Consumers by Going Live
Last but not least, we encourage you to go live! This might feel scary, especially if the advice earlier about showing your face made you hyperventilate a little bit. But live is a great way to get to know your audience in an unscripted, candid and unfiltered way. Now you can’t go live until you hit a thousand followers also. But once you get there, going live on TikTok is pretty awesome.
Here’s the thing. If you’re brand new you might have zero people on there at first. That’s the best audience to make mistakes around! And also, to get comfortable being yourself, being in that awkward silence and getting to know you being on video. Ideally you are going to meet or exceed the expectations that who they’re seeing in that video and on your feed is just as, or even more awesome. The product works even better than they thought. Or the restaurant is even more beautiful than what you showed! That is actually encouraging them to take some kind of action.
Did you find these tips useful? Are you planning on using any or all of these tips? Make sure to also check out more of our posts on how you can fully utilise TikTok for businesses!
