Have you heard about TikTok? Even if you have not used it actively, chances are you’ve encountered a TikTok challenge. This platform has taken the world by storm, particularly due to the challenges many have viewed and tried out. Engaging in these challenges is a surefire way to garner likes and attention on TikTok, just like other activities on the platform. So, getting plenty of TikTok likes is only possible by participating in challenges, as in all other platform activities.
Who Uses TikTok?
So, who’s on TikTok? While TikTok is universal, the platform initially was for the younger crowd. 78% of its users fall between the ages of 11 and 24! However, it’s interesting to observe that the youth, professionals, and everyday folks have also started TikTok recently.
But it’s also worth noting that professionals and individuals are now using TikTok. Given this social network’s virality and its community’s commitment, businesses have been quick to recognize the stakes.
According to a study published by alioze.com, 37% of users go on TikTok to follow new trends, and 67% say they have discovered new products thanks to TikTok advertising. They emphasize that they are fun but also authentic, reliable, and honest. The social network allows them to show a more human and closer side than other social networks.
Companies and brands can take advantage of the app to communicate with a wider, and often younger, audience. They gain visibility and have the opportunity to build a community quickly. The result? Businesses can raise their profile, win the loyalty of their community, and increase their sales (and therefore their turnover).
What is a TikTok Challenge?
Video challenges are the heart of TikTok. Typically, these challenges revolve around a specific dance move or a catchy song that catches on like wildfire. TikTok enthusiasts then recreate and adapt this content on their profiles. To make these videos easily shareable and discoverable, they’re often tagged with a specific hashtag (#). This not only boosts the visibility of the challenge but also categorizes it under a trending theme. Such challenges have played an important role in TikTok’s rise and have led to the widespread sharing of its content across other sites.
For brands, these challenges present a good opportunity. They serve as a dynamic medium to amplify brand or product visibility. Originating organically from the user community or as a structured part of promotional campaigns, these video challenges command immense user engagement and interaction.
These challenges are an excellent tool for increasing the exposure of your brand or product on the platform. They are video challenges that emerge from the community or as part of marketing campaigns. These formats generate very high user engagement.
If you can carry out challenges already launched, you can also create your own. This is certainly the best way of raising awareness of and engagement with your brand. The aim is to develop a fun way for users to interact with your products. But a challenge can’t be created in the blink of an eye.
The community is invited to create a short scene based on a given theme or music or to reproduce a choreography. Users can launch challenges, usually TikTokers influencers with a large following or brands that have invested in TikTok advertising. To create a viral challenge, you need to consider some factors.
The Content of Your Challenge
To be successful as a brand, your challenge has to follow TikTok’s rules. It needs to be interesting, fun, and easy to complete. You need to make it easy to emulate, accessible to everyone, and not require any particular skills or tools. There should also be plenty of space for freedom. Produce an exemplary video to introduce the challenge and get it off to a good start.
By doing so, users will be able to freely express themselves and be motivated to create content that they can contribute. Still, your guidelines make sense if you’re broad enough to allow everyone to complete the challenge in their own way and add their own perspective.
Set the Duration of the TikTok Challenge
You should also set the duration of the challenge. In marketing, a limited duration encourages participation. Under time pressure, people will act faster for fear of missing out on the offer. Therefore, tell users clearly how much time they have to complete a challenge.
Find a Viral Hashtag
You can make a hashtag the name of your brand or product. It is best to stick to one hashtag to make your challenge easily recognizable and accessible to all users.
You can also use a descriptive hashtag that summarizes the concept of your challenge in a few words. The text of the hashtag should make it easy to understand the challenge’s theme so that users get involved and want to participate. For example, the #LipstickChallenge was about putting on lipstick for a lip dance, hence the ambiguous name.
Choosing Trendy Music
Music should be age-appropriate. Therefore, choose contemporary hits. If you choose a popular song, your video can go viral. People can learn about your challenge by browsing for their favorite music in the app. For that reason, we highly advise you to choose a song from the Viral or Top 40 playlists. We also suggest you check out music trends in the Sound tab. There you will see a list of the most popular sounds. After clicking on a piece of music, you’ll be redirected to the video where it’s played.
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Other Ways To Engage Your Audience
Participating in challenges alone won’t help you reach a new level or keep you interested. It would help if you used them wisely and at the right time. Remember that challenges should also be combined with other types of activities and the involvement of influencers. Let’s talk more about it.
Influencers
Collaborating with influencers can be an asset for a brand. Why, you ask? Because these influencers are not just the talk of the day but the trusted voice in a crowd. Their fanbase sees them as real people, making their word almost gospel.
Brands can capitalize on this wave of trust in a few ways:
- By joining forces with top influencers, brands can put their products and services on the map and attract attention left, right, and center.
- Besides making waves, influencers can weave a brand’s offerings into their stories and songs. This can lead to a domino effect that drives sales, be it through a quirky showcase or a heartfelt shoutout.
- Engaging with influencers can also give brands a direct line to reality. The chatter of an influencer’s tribe can offer brands a goldmine of insights and help them adjust their products or strategies.
But the real icing on the cake is when the brand’s vision and the influencer’s vibe come together. Brands should take their time with partnerships. They should realize that while many influencers are the darlings of the brand, not all influencers will be their cup of tea. It is crucial to choose influencers whose content, audience, and beliefs match the brand’s heartbeat.
While a one-off shoutout can heat up tempers, the long-term partnerships, built on trust and teamwork, impresses.
Talking to the Camera
The TikTok videos that generate the most interest are those in which the creators talk to the viewers in front of the camera. The phone may or may not be hand-held. The important thing is to show a close-up of the person being filmed. Other types of videos work, but these are the ones with the “Tiktok” signature that users like to see first.
To promote your business on Tiktok, we advise you to speak in front of the camera to create a video that looks native, i.e. designed for the Tiktok community.
Don’t Try to Sell
On TikTok, we don’t sell anything (for the moment). Brands are rare, as are advertising messages, so users are used to non-intrusive content.
In other words, the party’s just getting started for the Tiktok community, and if you don’t want to stop things with invasive promotions, consider giving.
On TikTok, you give away tips and tricks. Or we give our audience fun in the form of entertaining videos. So imagine the advice you could give 16-to 30-year-olds relevant to your business. Is there anything you know that could help your audience?
You can tell anecdotes if you don’t have any knowledge to share. Stories are always a big hit on TikTok.
Get Straight to the Point
On TikTok, you can only watch one video at a time. This means two things:
- You have your audience’s full attention at any given time.
- People change videos quite quickly.
So, it would help if you made it clear from the first seconds of the video that your content interests the viewer. To do this, you can either add a title to the video that people can read and which announces the theme of your content. You can also verbally present the benefits of your video in the very first few seconds.
Entertaining Videos
These videos are designed to entertain and engage followers while promoting your brand. This type of content is ideal for retaining existing customers and attracting new fans. You can create comical or intuitive videos, depending on the message you want to convey to your audience.
Finally, it’s important to remember that all content should be punchy and relevant to your target audience. It’s also important to use relevant hashtags so that your audience can easily find your content among all the other publications on the social network. User-searchable hashtags can also increase the overall visibility of content published on TikTok to more active users.
Using TikTok is an interesting solution to get the most out of your marketing strategy. Nevertheless, it is important to stick to best behavior in order to make the most of it. Indeed, approaching this platform with full knowledge of the facts and taking good practice into account is the key to effective and profitable marketing.
Image provided by Unsplash
Why To Do All This: Advantages for Brands
As we’ve already explained, TikTok is undergoing exponential growth – which means a huge audience is ready to be contacted by creative brands.
Brands that quickly switched to TikTok have seen their brand awareness grow rapidly, often with little investment. Publishers like The Washington Post amassed over 400,000 subscribers in less than a year, shifting their reach to a new, more global and younger demographic.
The great thing about TikTok is that even accounts without subscribers can get millions of views on a new video. Content is king on TikTok.
For example, Taylor Loren, Later’s Head of Content Marketing, has over 3 million views on her candle tutorial video. At the time of publication, she had less than 50 subscribers on the app. She has since grown to 20,000 subscribers in just 4 months.
The network is now making generating traffic from the platform easier by introducing a link in the bio for pro accounts. All users can also add links to their Instagram and YouTube profiles from their TikTok profile.
Another huge advantage is the speed with which the platform evolves to meet the needs of brands and advertisers. Advertising on TikTok is a well-established brand promotional strategy for numerous labels.
To promote its autumn Denim Fit collection, Guess said it used TikTok to invite the TikTok public to help shape their style with Guess jeans to the Bebe Rexh soundtrack “I’m a Mess”. The #InMyDenim promotion featured a brand engagement on the app’s home screen and 4 partner videos with top influencers to demonstrate the vision and reach even more followers.
Final Thoughts
Challenges are a good way for brands to promote themselves and communicate with the audience. However, it is important to determine which challenges you should participate in and which ones are outside your brand. You can also create your challenge by analyzing the previous ones, but you need a detailed audience analysis to understand whether your followers will take it up.
