If you are a business that is looking to spread its brand awareness, the social media platform Tiktok may have come under your radar. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter of course still hold some value when it comes to driving organic traffic to your websites from the internet, but the king of social media in recent years is Tiktok. It is no surprise a lot of businesses have utilized the lucrative platform to generate as many customers and sales as possible, but it can be a confusing site to understand if you have no experience with it.
Of course, if you have the sufficient fund to do so, you can always hire a social media manager that specializes in social media content and gaining organic traffic in that way, however, if you are an SME with a small budget, Tiktok is easy enough to use and not spend hours of getting results from it. Many start-ups that began during the 2020 lockdowns only began through selling on Tiktok and Instagram, therefore it is a great place to start driving traffic to your sites with.
How does the Tiktok algorithm work
Now algorithms on all social media platforms follow a similar system whereby it attempts to determine which videos should be appearing on online users’ feeds. Each user has their individual experience with the algorithm, they might see the same videos or content but never in the same style or content that comes after it. The TikTok For You page is designed for the viewer’s preferences to make sure viewers are seeing the content they love.
The ‘For You’ algorithm page has a few determining factors:
- Videos users have liked
- Videos users have shared
- Comments under creators’ posts
- How many times a video has been watched by a user
- How long the user is on the video
- Creators you follow
- Videos selected as “not interested”
- Content made on personal user’s accounts
These act as clues for Tiktok to make the user experience as enjoyable as possible, and to keep up to date with the user’s likes and dislikes. All of these can help businesses as it makes things a lot easier when creating content and targeting it to the desired audience. For example, if you are a cosmetic surgeon looking to target new mums who have already been liking content about cosmetic surgery and mummy makeovers, Tiktok will link your specific content to that audience who have already shown similar interests in what you offer.
How to optimize your videos
There are several ways in which you can optimize your videos for organic growth. Once you get into the swing of making videos you might find that the ones you spend the least effort on getting the most views! Speaking in general terms, users on TikTok use the platform for pleasure, enjoyment and to reap the benefits of the personal user experience. If you are creating mundane ads that are very robotic, which contain ads and no individuals, it is highly unlikely to gain traction. The key is to be as real as possible, advice blogs and personable experiences that people can relate to or are seeking help for will grant you the best success in your video content. If you are going to be the lucky person appearing in the video content, you need to be likable! Trying to communicate messages if you do not seem excited about what you are talking about gives users more of a reason to swipe off as soon as they lose interest! As we mentioned prior, time spent on your video and how people interact is really important if you want to gain followers and have your content on the For You page as frequently as possible.
Content writing for posts
Zooming in on the more technical side of things, you should understand the importance of hashtags and word placement. If you have dabbled in SEO, you may already understand the importance of keywords. Using specific keywords in hashtags will also give your content more power when it comes to targeting the exact audience you are looking for. It may be smart to see what competitors in your industry who are doing well on Tik Tok are using for their hashtags. Keep in mind that overloading your captions with hashtags will make your videos do worse than better, as it looks spammy and unnatural to Tiktok. Although hashtags are important, simply using keywords that your business is aiming to optimize for in the video caption can also have the same effect. Finally, in terms of content writing, the captions on the actual video should be catchy and interesting to our target audience. For example, if you are targeting young investors you may use “How I become financially free at the age of 20”, as this is appealing to learn more about just from reading the caption in the first 3 seconds.
Creating the video
Before writing all the content, you need to first have an actual video to work with. Creating the video might seem confusing if you are not familiar with the app, but you won’t learn until you try! Get the hang of the controls and post some videos to your drafts to refer back to. Get a colleague to help you if you are struggling, or ask for their opinion on the content before posting. Make sure you are asking someone brutally honest.
One of the biggest tips when creating the actual video is making sure the quality of the video is up to scratch. That does not mean to say you have to have the best quality camera with a special editing team to approve all the content. Simply just make sure the video is high-quality, not grainy, and the sound quality is smooth. If you think your videos are looking low quality, try to capture content with natural lighting and ensure your video is on the maximum video quality setting. A final tip you should keep in mind is the video length. If you have not noticed already, Tiktok is known for its short-timed videos and a burst of content. Although they have introduced 3-minute long videos, you should aim for a variety of 15-second long videos to 60 seconds. Include a variety of video lengths with a constant pattern of posting a few times a week, and you should start to see the organics coming in.
