E-commerce

How small businesses can use TikTok to grow their business

With over 3.5 million users across Australia and roughly 7 hours of daily Australian consumer usage, it is no surprise that TikTok is shaking the social media game by storm. This begs the question, can we use this social media giant to push our small business’s growth?

In short, the answer is yes, and especially with a limited budget.

From questions such as “Where do I start?” to “How do I maintain my customer’s engagement?”, I’ve covered everything you need to know in seven easy steps down here.

1. Creating a TikTok Business Account

It might come as blatantly obvious to you; however, creating a TikTok Business Account is different to a TikTok Personal Account due to the various features that assist with tracking metrics. 

With a Business Account, you can seamlessly create ads, track your analytics, and analyse your business account’s overall engagement. 

To set up a Business Account, you’ll need to follow the prompts within the “Manage Account” tab within the TikTok app.

2. Identifying your target audience

In all fairness, it’s fine if you’re not exactly sure who your target audience is, especially as a small-business owner.

Here are a few questions to help with understanding your target audience.

• Who are you trying to reach with your content?
• What are their interests and preferences?
• How can I adapt my content to engage my audience?

By understanding your target audience, you’ll be better at attracting organic followers that will engage with your content.

3. Creating engaging content

As we all know, TikTok’s success is derived from its engagement, and for you to be successful, you’ll also need to ensure your content is as engaging as possible. This means you’ll need to dedicate a few hours to understanding the various media formats TikTok offers, including videos, images, text overlays and the magic of reposts.

With all this in mind, it’s best to ensure the content that you post reflects your brand and foundational values. Otherwise, your future customers will be confused about what your business offers.

4. Utilising hashtags

#FYP only goes so far, especially when the billions of TikTok users also use this for their content. We all know that hashtags are a great way to increase the visibility of your TikTok content, so it’s best to ensure you include the appropriate hashtags for your target audience.

5. Collaborating with influencers 

A great way to increase the number of organic followers flooding your TikTok base is to collaborate with TikTok influencers with similar values to your business. This is because TikTok influencers have a large user base with immense engagement, especially when the influencer is genuine for their cause.

6. Run contests and giveaways

An easy way to increase the visibility of your products and services amongst your followers is to run contests and giveaways. These events can be as simple as a fun challenge that targets your followers to create similar content and challenge their friends by tagging them.

The best content is always genuine, and who wouldn’t want to see a small business owner engage directly with their followers?

7. Monitoring your analytics

Our last step relates to monitoring your analytics, analysing your performance and, of course, acting to strengthen your engagement. Your analytics are paramount for understanding what content works and what doesn’t. By understanding your content’s analytics, you’ll be able to easily improve the performance of your future content.

By following these simple seven steps, you can utilise TikTok’s full potential to increase your small business’s visibility without increasing your budget.

This story was originally published on Inside Small Business.