Juggling tasks is key for entrepreneurs, especially when it comes to selecting priority marketing channels. For many new entrepreneurs, sticking to the tried and tested social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn is often seen as the safe bet, while some are not as familiar with newer social platforms like TikTok and Clubhouse, along with their vast capabilities.
However, with 689 million people around the world using TikTok every month and predictions that almost 40% of the U.S. population will be using it by 2024, it’s becoming harder to ignore its appeal. TikTok content truly is the present and the future.
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If your startup is considering how it can use TikTok content to market its products and services, here are six types of video content to explore:
Hashtag challenges
As a startup, you should be well used to the need to get noticed, and one of the best ways to achieve this on TikTok is through hashtag challenges. This involves you setting a challenge for users to copy and share with their followers, hopefully encouraging each of them to do the same and sending your challenge and your brand viral. Finding the balance between showcasing your product while still creating a challenge that is fun and accessible to all is the key, exemplified by Chipotle’s hugely successful #GuacDance challenge.
Influencer marketing
TikTok’s influencers are hugely popular among a hard-to-reach young audience, making them gold for marketers. Finding the right influencer for your audience is key, but if you can work with him or her to create engaging content, like the #EyesLipsFace campaign from Elf Cosmetics, you can reach potential customers around the world.
Related: How Startups and Entrepreneurs Can Use TikTok to Grow Their Businesses
Tutorials
Your social media marketing strategy should never be just about broadcasting your brand’s messages. You need to give your users valuable content, too, and tutorials are the perfect combination of promotion and information. They work especially well for brands whose products or services help to solve a common problem. Create a tutorial video showing consumers exactly how your product works.
User-generated content
Creativity is the name of the game on TikTok. Take for example, Converse. The company showed how well user-generated content can work by earning more than 50 million views for its #ConverseAllStar campaign, calling upon fans to customize their sneakers in the most creative ways.
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Giveaways
As a startup, you might not yet have a built-in audience like a brand the size of Converse, and this is where giveaways can help energize a campaign. Incentivizing users to share their content or take part in a challenge in the hope of winning something is a tried-and-tested way to get more engagement on any platform.
Livestreams
Livestreams are becoming more popular across platforms like Facebook and Instagram and even more so on TikTok. Livestreaming offers the chance to engage with users in real time with longer-than-usual videos and gives startups the ability to humanize their brand with behind-the-scenes content that tells their startup journey.
Each of these types of TikTok content can help startups build and engage an audience on TikTok with fun and lively videos that have the potential to go viral. Here’s an infographic to explain more.
Originally published June 30, 2021.
