The rapid growth of TikTok has come as a surprise to social media enthusiasts. In just a few years of its existence, the platform boasts of a whopping 100 million active users. Brands have started seeing this as a future of possibilities and have taken to exploring the marketing potential of TikTok.

While TikTok was traditionally dominated by people under 20, today, 38% of TikTok users in the US are people above 30. Thus, with a targeted approach, you can leverage TikTok to connect with your followers. The best part about using TikTok in marketing is that you can reach a wider audience at a relatively lesser investment.

However, establishing a brand presence on TikTok is more than just creating video content. You need to understand the finer nuances of the TikTok algorithm and tweak your content to expand its reach.  While creativity has no limit, a look at the videos from the most popular channels on TikTok will reveal that they use similar basic methods to boost their visibility. In this article, we will describe the five most effective methods used by popular brands to boost their TikTok visibility.

Planning The Hashtags

Creating video content requires effort, and unless you want your efforts to go in vain, you need to plan your hashtags. Considering that 87.3% of TikTok videos have some hashtags, you need to ensure that the hashtag is relevant to your content. While you do not need to restrict yourself to adding one hashtag per video, avoid cramping your content with hashtags.

In TikTok, the hashtags that you choose will appear in the video’s caption. As the caption length is restricted to 100 characters, using too many hashtags will lead to compromising the caption. A look at the viral TikTok content will reveal that they have an average of 3.26 hashtags per video.

If you are unsure of which hashtag to add to your content, try typing a broad keyword in the platform’s search bar. That way, TikTok will suggest a list of hashtags. You can then pick the ones that are relevant to your content.

Using TikTok Live Videos

Live videos are an efficient way for brands to strike a personal connection with their target audience. For example, when your brand is launching a new product or service, you can live to stream it on TikTok.

While brands can’t invite thousands of followers in their product launches, the live sessions help the followers feel involved in the brand’s journey. Moreover, since such sessions happen in real-time, they lend an air of authenticity to the brand.

When your brand is launching an innovative product that does not have market competition, the target audience will have questions about it. With live videos, you can answer such questions in real-time and establish your credibility. This is especially true if your brand is from the tech, gaming, or food genre. Such videos have the highest average views on TikTok.

Partnering with Influencers

For newbie TikTok brands, partnering with influencers is an effective way of establishing a presence on the platform. The best thing about TikTok is that it has hundreds of influencers and micro-influencers, and you need to identify someone relevant to your niche. If someone popular among your target audience collaborates with you, you can expect a boost in your sales.

According to the latest report, about 25% of the popular TikTok videos featured an influencer or a celebrity. Thus, by collaborating with popular personalities, you increase your chances of getting viral. Ideally, when you come across someone who you think is an appropriate collaborator, reach out to them with a proposal.

Send out a friendly message to such celebrities and try to be clear on the expectations. The way you illustrate your interest in the collaboration will decide whether they will respond. If possible, try to lay down the details of the type of partnership that you are interested in. Since it may take a while before a popular personality accepts your proposal, try to be patient, and send out such invites to multiple content creators.

Leveraging TikTok Ads

Some of the most popular brands in TikTok have gained their present popularity by leveraging paid ads. Most small businesses prefer in-feed ads to promote their brand. Here, you can go for interest tagging. That way, as a content creator, you can select an interest that is relevant to your target audience. TikTok will show your in-feed ad to users who share the interest that you mentioned.

TikTok also allows users to create branded hashtags, top view ads, branded effects, and branded takeovers. Behavioral targeting works with this advertising. Here, the brand targets people based on their past behavior on TikTok. That way, your paid advertisement will show up for people who are active on the platform.

Organizing and Participating in Challenges

As a buzzing social media, TikTok has fun hashtag challenges. In the initial days of your brand journey, spend time identifying the most popular hashtag challenges in your industry genre. Think outside the box and create innovative video content while participating in such challenges.

When you create exemplary content, it stands a high chance of getting shared and becoming viral. That way, your brand will become popular and people will start noticing it. Over time, you can create your brand hashtag challenges by encouraging your followers to create content on a theme.

Despite its rapid growth as a social media platform, over 50% of the top brands are yet to have a TikTok presence. This holds for larger brands such as Facebook, Google, IKEA, and YouTube as well. In such a situation, including TikTok as a part of your marketing strategies will put you at a competitive advantage.

To make the most of TikTok, you need to work on the visual appeal of your video. Depending on the type of content you wish to create, you can either use a TikTok filter or use an external video editing tool to prepare your content. As 80% of the top-performing TikTok content has music, we suggest that you focus on identifying relevant music and using that to set the mood for your TikTok video.

While planning your TikTok content, another crucial factor is consistency. If your video has multiple shots filmed at different times, color correct the content for better visual appeal.

Since there is no guaranteed path to video content, creating multiple videos increases your chances of success. The most successful brands on TikTok post an average of 3.52 videos per week. As a content creator, you need to realize that every TikTok journey is unique and work on establishing your brand presence on the platform.