How to use TikTok for business: The 8 Most Important Tips

1. Get your profile on brand

Your TikTok profile is your storefront display on the platform, so it needs to say a lot in very little space. Don’t worry, you don’t need to give your entire company backstory here. TikTok is all about fast-moving, impactful content, and your profile should reflect that. 

There are three main aspects to work on, which we’ll go through now:

Profile picture

Experts in how to use TikTok for business consistently recommend keeping your picture simple. Take your brand logo, make sure it follows the color scheme you use elsewhere, and you’re ready to go. 

Bio

Your bio is a bit more complex. You only have 80 characters to make an impact, so experiment with a few different ideas before you launch. Your bio should sum up what makes you special and include a call to action to nudge users toward your URL. If it’s not straying too far from your tone of voice, save a few of those precious characters with emojis. 

URL

When considering your URL, ask yourself why you’re using TikTok for business. If it’s to lead your audience to sales, link to a landing page. Alternatively, you can change it up and offer your users new content regularly. 

2. Research, research, research

One of the hottest TikTok trends for businesses now is to use it as a source of research. Competitors, industry, and even the TikTok megastars — it’s all valuable information that can help you improve your social media strategy. 

Route one is to check hashtags that are relevant to you, see what content is trending and listen into the conversation through the comments. Take your findings and use it to inspire the kind of content you upload. Just don’t sacrifice your brand identity for the likes.

If you have a TikTok addict on your team, channel their energy into something productive. As experts on the platform, they have a well-above-average understanding of how to use TikTok for business and will be happy to take a deep dive into your competitors, understand your customers’ interests, and spot new trends as soon as they’ve gone viral. 

3. What it’s all about: Creating content

Content creation is the most obvious tip for how to use TikTok for business, but it is an enormous beast with a range of applications. Here, we’ll focus on organic posts — the bread and butter of your account. 

You don’t need a production team running your content efforts. A phone and a bit of practice using effects and transitions is more than enough and simple, authentic videos rank far better than refined corporate efforts. 

If you offer a service, use your TikTok platform to offer snippets of advice and tips that solve questions your followers have. Educational videos are among the top TikTok trends for businesses and they appear high on your audience’s For You tab. Be sure to stay in your lane — don’t try to be an all-round expert — and you’ll consolidate your position as a go-to expert in your field. 

The mysterious algorithms behind the platform are a well-guarded secret, but our advice to stay on top is to post about once or twice a day. The best way to keep track of your content is with a team content calendar, where you can take a long-term view of a year or zoom in for a day-by-day focus. 

4. Concentrate content on your location

Fully online organizations aside, most small companies get a large amount of their custom from their local area. Therefore, part of learning how to use TikTok for business is targeting those who are physically close to you online. 

TikTok allows users to include your location in your caption, and a hashtag always helps find those searching for your city. Similarly, if you mention your location in your educational videos, it will pique the interest of your audience who are on the lookout for a nearby company. To take things further, step outside the office and show your city pride by uploading videos shot at local landmarks.

If you focus on your immediate vicinity, you’re more likely to get user engagement, which the platform values. One of the best TikTok ideas for businesses is to use the algorithms to your advantage. Gain success at a local level and the app will gradually expand it to wider regions. 

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5. Don’t be afraid to take on a TikTok challenge

Later, we’ll cover how you can launch your own branded challenges, but there’s nothing stopping you from jumping on board somebody else’s challenge. While it might not be the first thing that comes to mind when wondering how to use TikTok for business, dropping the formality and taking part can get you a great amount of clout. 

Challenges are an easy way of producing content. The entire structure is ready-made, it’s guaranteed to be relatable, and you can put together a video in a very short period of time. To stay relevant, your social media manager should regularly keep an eye on the songs, dances, and other activities that are trending and bring their own twist to the table. 

It is of course very possible to miss the mark on challenges and come across somewhat stiff. While appearing relatable is essential to using TikTok for business, you shouldn’t leave your company ethos behind as you try to go viral. 

Understanding the platform’s vibe is crucial to pulling off a great challenge, so see how other companies are doing with their contributions. However, as with so many aspects of TikTok ideas for businesses, listening to the advice of your younger team members is always a smart move. 

6. Launch branded effects and filters

Just a few years ago, technical content creation was still reserved for programmers and developers frantically typing away in offices. 

However creating your own branded effects and filters has now been democratized to an astonishing extent. You can produce anything — from stickers and filters to games and special effects — and share them with the market. As branded material, it encourages user interaction in a way that regular ads simply can’t, and offers an alternative to challenges. 

Branded lenses let you create a 2D and 3D TikTok filter that appears in the discover section for 10 days. Your users can then add it to their uploads and spread the word about your business. However, TikTok has also gone on to release transformative AR filters. You can create animated backgrounds, face masks, and distortions that really set you apart. Our only advice is to remember what your end goal is — if it doesn’t serve your purposes, it’s a waste of money.

On the subject of cost, branded effects don’t come in cheap, and get more expensive depending on the complexity. That said, they are possibly the most innovative example of how to use TikTok for business, and if executed well, they can be a great source of both revenue and reach. 

7. Capitalize on user-generated content

Like on all social media platforms, user-generated content is a free, trustworthy marketing strategy — and it doesn’t take much to get the ball rolling. And if you know anything about TikTok, it’s that challenges play a huge role in the platform’s success.

The best way to get your audience active is to launch a hashtag challenge. The basic premise is to get some buzz by users uploading content that features your hashtag. These can be either native efforts, which you can push for free, or branded challenges, which require a small investment. 

If you run a sponsored hashtag challenge, a banner will appear on the Discover section of the app. With a click, users will find instructions to your challenge and the rest is up to them. 

Getting influencers on board

Another widespread method of how to use TikTok for business is to hire influencers to generate content on your behalf. You open up more intimate access to their followers, and a creative positive review in the mix. 

You get what you pay for here: influencers with huge followings will be expensive, while those with a smaller audience will cost less. However, when you match the right influencer with your brand, the rewards can be impossible to ignore.

Therefore, make sure to choose an influencer whose followers fall into your target audience, and if they share your company values, even better. Your influencer will then promote your product in a video and put a link to your landing page as a caption. 

8. Paying for ads? Do it right!

Don’t make ads. Make TikToks. 

This is the golden rule for brands wondering how to use TikTok for business. Users are acutely aware of how companies try to push their products, so stick to the TikTok vibe and you can expect a much better ROI.

There are three ways businesses can launch ads on TikTok:

• TopView Ads

• In-Feed Ads

• Brand Takeover Ads

TopView Ads

TopView ads have a double-pronged advantage of appearing at the top of a user’s feed when they open the app, and lasting 60 seconds. Link to a landing page and monitor your incoming traffic.

In-Feed Ads

You’ll already have seen in-feed ads if you use other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. They can be up to 60 seconds, but with the pace of the app, we suggest sticking to around 15 seconds per ad to hold attention. 

Brand Takeover Ads

For an entire day, brand takeovers show an unskippable three-second image or up to a five-second GIF when users open the app. They are exclusive, meaning no competitors from your category can interrupt your time on the front page.

For all of their ads, TikTok provides a good range of analytics you can use to monitor your success, with impressions, views, click-through rate, engagements, and more. With so many active users, it is a fantastic stream of traffic for your website.

However, TikTok is not an e-commerce site and your users don’t actively seek out your ads. Therefore, you can’t expect to sell high-value products, so try limiting your offering to things you might buy impulsively for no more than $50.

Discovering how to use TikTok for business is a fantastic way of connecting with the ever-elusive Gen Z. Although not limited to the youngsters, TikTok can open up a vast new market and is an invaluable source of fresh ideas for your existing audiences.

However, it’s not just as easy as picking up your phone and throwing content at the internet. Without the right tools, companies can waste resources on a fruitless endeavor. 

Over 10,000,000 businesses have put their trust in Bitrix24 as an organizational base from which to show off their creative flair. Combining a CRM, project management software, communications tools. and so much more, it makes doing business easy.

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