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TikTok wasn’t always TikTok. In 2014 it started as Musical.ly, it was built for educational purposes, but very quickly it evolved into a lipsync app. In 2016 they reached 70 million downloads. Also in 2016 Douyin was launched in China, an app for short videos. They were very successful in Asia and decided to rebrand the app to TikTok one year later. In 2018 TikTok merged with Musical.ly. This is the ultrashort version of the history of the app.
So it is not a success story that just started last year and miraculously became a worldwide success. TikTok has come a long way and is extremely popular today. And that’s not only the case for teenagers (although most active users are under 35). Business of Apps published some research numbers in May 2021, together with many other interesting statistics. Depending on the source, TikTok had between 1.7 and 2.7 million Belgian users by the end of 2021. That’s quite a lot. But what does this mean? Does TikTok fit into your social media marketing strategy? That question can only be answered by you. But to help you decide this for yourself, we give you some insights.
A lot of sceptical people still have that image of Musical.ly that only attracted teenagers. The app where you could only find silly dance videos. But a lot has happened since then. for starters, there are 2 billion users worldwide. This cannot be ignored. Next to that, more users of different age groups have joined. Also in Belgium, the platform already has a great number of users and this will continue to grow.
But also the content on the platform evolved. Next to dance videos, you will also find comedy, business tips and life quotes, marketing gurus and political parties. These are all users that understood very well that an important part of their target audience is active on TikTok and that you can connect with them through short fun videos.
The active group of TikTok users for your B2B company might be very small right now, but there are predictions that indicate that this could change. That is why experimenting with the platform might be well worth it. If you do, make sure that you know your buyer persona. After a few little tests, we got to a rather big reach: even with a brand new account, our first video got 1000 views on the same day.
Next to a large and increasing number of users, TikTok has other interesting advertising possibilities. The 7th biggest social media platform provides the following possibilities:
Below you can find some examples of ads on TikTok: Fortnite, Zalando and Scarlet
If your target audience is active on TikTok (and the likelihood of that happening grows by the day), then advertising is definitely something to consider. You should foresee a minimum budget of 500$ per TikTok campaign. On the advertising platform of TikTok, you can find more information about the ins and outs.
Users are much more engaged on TikTok compared to other platforms. They like to add comments to your videos and they will watch your videos with the sound on. Both image and sound play an important role in contrast to Youtube, where users play the video but only listen most of the time. On TikTok they listen and watch, which leads to more engagement.
If you want engagement from your target audience, make sure to use the trends on the platform, there are a lot of them. The better your video, the more people will react to it and the more it will be shared. The engagement that your content gets on TikTok is definitely worth the effort.
TikTok users spend a lot of time on the platform: on average 89 minutes per day. They open the app 19 times per day. If you know that a video only lasts a few seconds, you get the picture of how many videos the average person consumes on a daily basis. That’s a whole lot of videos, trust me!
The platform offers a lot of possibilities to create fun, interesting, entertaining videos. You can record them directly from the app. You can also add lenses, filters or stickers and add some audio. The possibilities are almost endless. Moreover, the whole process is very easy. You don’t need video editing skills. With a good idea and some creativity, you get a long way towards creating good TikTok content.
To benefit from TikTok, you don’t need to publish a lot of content yourself, you can also just watch videos that are relevant to your business. Most TikTok video’s are very entertaining, but there is also some inspiring content. A lot of users like to share tips, insights and experiences in different fields. By following them, you can get some inspiration for your own organisation. You keep up with the latest trends in your industry, you can get some creative ideas for your own content, learn stuff from partners or competitors and so on.
With this information, you can improve your own marketing activities. You can use the ideas and tips to write better blog posts, create nicer visuals or just improve and speed up your own processes. We already came across some nice tools that help us work more efficiently.
So, does TikTok fit in your social media strategy? That is the question you should be able to answer a bit better by now. It is different for every company, but it is a question that we get frequently, and we want to help you answer it. Speaking for ourselves: we will definitely continue to post on TikTok and we are very curious about how it will evolve.
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