TikTok Is Not For You …maybe…
– Clarissa Burrows
So, you’ve heard of TikTok as a social media platform, maybe you’ve even heard that it can be used for businesses. That’s true, however, it’s not true for all businesses.
TikTok is the Instagram of the short-form video world. Whether or not you should sign your business up for TikTok depends entirely on what you do and how pretty it is. TikTok is about aesthetically pleasing content, entertaining content, and content that makes you laugh. That kind of thing, but every day, if not more.
What it’s not for, is filming little snippets of your highly technical event, that’s great for YouTube. It isn’t for clips of your company’s CEO speaking at a highly prestigious conference, it’d be good on Twitter or Facebook though. It isn’t for making slideshows of your single-image social media posts, leave those on Facebook and Instagram, where they’ll do better.
Streaming events is possible on TikTok, but you need over a thousand followers before you’re able to live stream. If your content isn’t engaging enough, that number of followers may be incredibly difficult to achieve, even if what you do is very important.
TikTok is a platform on which you can’t take yourself too seriously. You need to think about your corporate messaging before deciding whether to sign up or not. What impression do you want the world to have of your company? Do you want people to think your company is no-nonsense and all business? If so, then no TikTok for you. Are you okay with routinely asking your CEO to do a trending TikTok dance or tell little jokes? Then sure, sign up for TikTok.
Also, consider if what you do is always visually appealing and worth watching. Would you watch a video of someone doing your job? Would you follow a page that exclusively posted videos of your job being done? If not, then maybe TikTok isn’t for you.
While people like builders and painters will always have something to film and share, your accounting firm may not. And even if you do have something to film, should you be sharing your client’s account details by accident? Probably not.
We’ve heard of big corporates wanting TikTok because someone heard from a teenager that everyone should be on TikTok, and no. That doesn’t apply to all businesses. TikTok takes work and dedication like all other platforms, and you need to be constantly feeding the content monster because it’s hungry every day. You need to post every day.
You may think that because it’s short-form video, it’s more manageable – this is not the case. It’s like doing a compelling and entertaining elevator pitch every day for the rest of forever. This is also not really a platform that can be handed off to a marketing agency, I mean, you could, but for best results, you’d need to be filming yourself and your day-to-day professional life. Which is a bit much when you have an actual job to do as well.
In closing, TikTok is a bit iffy as far as platforms go. It’s very much dependent on what you do and how much effort you’re willing to put in. If you can commit to doing it and you know you’ll always have content, then go ahead and disregard everything you’ve just read. TikTok is a fantastic brand awareness platform that really works to gain viewers’ trust and loyalty, but ONLY when the brand is committed to posting daily, at the very least.
If you’re unsure if you’ll have enough content, talk to us and we’ll let you know what we think. Or if you’re after more logical marketing for your business, we can help.
