TikTok is a rapidly growing social media platform, and with it comes TikTok Influencer marketing; a strategy that is being adopted by most brands to increase their awareness and drive sales.

To understand the concept of TikTok influencer marketing, we need to know how the platform works.

1) How TikTok Works:

TikTok is a platform where people share short video clips that are usually 15 seconds long. These short clips can be combined to a total of 60 seconds. Users on the platform can interact with these videos as they scroll down their feeds. They can engage with the videos by liking, commenting or sharing the clips on their timelines thus boosting the virality scores.

To create a video on TikTok, simply start recording by clicking the plus button at the bottom of your Android or IOS app. You can record natively within the app or import a video from your Media files.

The pre-recording screen contains tons of features such as filters, clones, timer and effects. One of the prominent effect is Green screen which allows you to change the background of your video. You can also choose to record the sound while taking the video, or choose the music or voiceover later on.

Once you are done recording, you are taken to the post-production screen where you have the ability to edit your video even further. Here you can add additional effects, texts, voiceovers, filters etc. Once you are satisfied with your video, simply upload.

While uploading, you can add caption of up to 150 characters, so make them count. Include relevant hashtags that are not too broad. Niche hashtags will make your videos easily discoverable.

2) TikTok Engagement Statistics

If you are still on the fence on whether you should use TikTok for your business, then these interesting statistics can help you make a decision.

If these stats aren’t enough, then think with me for a moment: TikTok has one power that other social media platforms do not, and this is the ability to create movements. Movements are powerful for one reason, they move people. With other platforms, influencer marketing work because of their ability to spark conversations, TikTok is more than that.

Brands for many years have struggled to make their customers feel as if they are part of their story, and now with the right TikTok challenges, promoted through relevant influencers, brands now have the power and the means to make this wish come through.

From challenges inviting users to breakdance in the aisles of their stores to those showing funny ways of how their employees unwind after work, brands are using TikTok to tell compelling stories without the usual boring corporate veil

3) Choosing The Right Influencers

Not everybody can adopt influencer marketing and succeed. This is because, there is a strategy behind it, and that’s knowing who to work with in the first place.

There are several parameters to consider when choosing the right influencer, some of which include:

  • Their reach: Go for influencers with 10,000 to 100K followers. Most influencers with this reach boost of high engagement and targeted audience. Besides, their budgets are usually within your reach
  • Audience demographics: Here, consider things like interests, location, age group etc. Make sure their audience match the profile of your ideal customer
  • Marketing goals: If your main focus is brand awareness then focus on influencers with wider audience. If you however want to close as many sales as possible, then focus on influencers with smaller, highly engaged audience with high spending power
  • Past partnerships: Most of the influencers that you will be reaching out to have probably partnered with brands in the past. You can easily find these records as case studies when you visit their website. If not, just request it directly from the publisher themselves.

But how do you even find these influencers?

Well, start off by simply searching “top TikTok influencers [niche] or “[niche] TikTok influencers” on Google. For instance, “Fitness TikTok Influencers.”

You will find curated lists based on your search query. Sift through them to find some that would be a good fit for your brand.

Influencer databases and marketplaces can also help. There are several curated databases and market places that can help you to easily scan through, and even analyze different influencers from different platforms and even make it easy for you to contact them.

You can also find influencers to partner with by searching for partners who are already working with brands. Simply search for sponsored content on TikTok using the hashtag #ad, and sift through the results to find ones that interest you. You can then reach out to them for collaboration

Finally, why not cross-check? If you have influencers that you like from other platforms such as Instagram, chances are they also have accounts on TikTok. You can search for them using the same account names or visit their websites and look for social media icons usually at the footer or sidebar.

4) TikTok has a Creator’s Marketplace

Influencer marketing is huge on TikTok, that’s why the team created a dedicated marketplace that brings advertisers and publishers together all in one place.

As an advertiser you’re enabled to choose the best partners based on exclusive data thus you get access to first-party insights on things like:

  • Audience demographics
  • Growth trends
  • Best performing videos etc.

You’ll also be presented with a section of the most popular storytellers. You can browse this section to find ones that match your brand and the Team at TikTok will do introductions on your behalf

5) TikTok Influencer Marketing Ads

Through the Creator’s Marketplace, TikTok makes it super easy to purchase influencer packages, something that you won’t find in any other social media ad network.

When running influencer marketing ads, pay attention to:

  • Compliance: Influencers should disclose that the content is sponsored by using the hashtag #ad in the video description
  • Performance Tracking: It’s vital to know how your campaigns are doing so as to make informed decisions on what next steps need to be taken. If your goal is brand awareness, then monitor views and engagement metrics such as likes and comments. For conversions, make sure that your landing page has a tracking code for your campaign that will allow you to identify clicks from the TikTok campaigns and how they are converting
  • Influencer Creative Freedom: It’s tempting to want to take control of video content, yet by so doing you deny yourself a chance to be wowed by the influencer’s own creativity. Influencers are creators that know their audience super well. Brainstorm with them, and leave them to create your video ad.

Once you are ready to start running influencer campaigns, settle on one main influencer campaigns type. There are three to choose from: Challenges, Dances and Duets.

To start an influencer campaign, click on the Create New Campaign button and add all he influencers that you want to work with. They will reach out to you with their offers and you can choose to accept and proceed.

6)  TikTok Influencer Marketing Tools

While TikTok is still new, there are already tools and platforms that will help you make the most of your influencer campaigns.

Tklytics by Iconosquare: This is a visual analytics tool for TikTok that makes it super easy to make sense of the stats from your influencer campaigns. You can track trends, songs and even keep an eye on your competitors.

Hypertrace: This tool helps you to quickly analyze thousands of TikTok influencers in terms of audience interests, category, reach, location etc.

Pentos: This is a great TikTok analytics tool for analyzing any profile, video, hashtag or songs on the platform in order to determine if working with a particular influencer has a potential of growing your business.

Julius: This is a human vetted database of 120,000 and growing influencers with ability to filter influencers by follower size, specialty, location and language

Conclusion.

The future is bright for influencer marketing on TikTok. If you haven’t designed your strategy to make use of the opportunity, now is the time. Some brands even have a dedicated TikTok influencer team who are tasked with content suggestion, influencer partnerships and KPI tracking.

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