By Kristine Aitchison
Author & Content Specialist
Do you want to be on TikTok? We had a chat with Rachel Klaver, content marketing coach, strategist, author, and columnist for Stuff, about some optimal strategies for TikTok marketing.
TikTok is about community.
TikTok isn’t a platform to sell your business, it’s about relationships and building a community Rachel says. She explains that if you want to showcase a product on TikTok, it is better to create videos that demonstrate you using the product, rather than a sales pitch. Her client, Sheryl Takayama from Why Weight Academy has grown her TikTok community by posting content that educates and entertains with motivational weight loss videos, taking her audience on shopping trips, and even showing them how to boil an egg. By creating content that is relatable, she’s not only exceeded her follower goals, but she is also now getting leads for her business via TikTok. Rachel says if you consider your audience when creating content, you’ll get better engagement.
Hit a subculture/niche.
The key to success on TikTok, according to Rachel, is to hit a highly engaged subculture community. She has two TikTok accounts, one where she talks about her weight loss journey and another for her marketing content. She says her weight loss community are far more engaged with her content than her marketing audience because she just naturally shares her thoughts and experiences. The key to this engagement is she’s hit a niche, and if you can hit a niche, you’ll generally find a highly engaged audience.
Don’t forget the hook.
Rachels says that if you want people to stop and listen to your content, you need to hook them in the first 3 seconds. A hook can draw attention to your content, slow their scroll, and get them to stop and pay attention. An example of a hook could be, “You need to know this today…” or
“I’d stick my whole career on this…”. According to Rachel, the hook is essential to TikTok success, to grab your audience’s attention and keep them watching.
Showing your face is key.
TikTok is the “most real and unfiltered” platform and the best for showing you as the business owner and face of your business, says Rachel. It’s a great platform for quickly building trust and authority for your brand. Sera Lilly from Friday Flamingo has had huge success on TikTok and has now gone from the New Zealand market to now being bought all over the world. She’s posted content about the ups and downs on TikTok and shared the whole process and story behind her business, she’s even cried on camera when things haven’t gone well. Rachel says TikTok played a major role in her success, and that was because she wasn’t afraid to show her face on camera and share “the multifaceted side of her business.”
The List of 10.
Rachel often recommends to her clients who are struggling to come up with content ideas, to choose one topic that relates to their business and write a list of ten ideas about that topic. They can then use those ten ideas over and over again, and just change the hook. For example, perhaps you sell heaters. Your different hooks could include ‘3 easy ways to warm a room,’ ‘Feeling cold at night?’, or ‘Here’s one thing I do to keep warm in this weather’. She says, “With just one list, you can create a lot of content” and, “Don’t be afraid of batching”. Batching is when you create a bunch of content at the same time, save it, and schedule and share it later.
People want real life on TikTok, not reels.
You can use TikTok on Instagram, but Rachel says, “People want to see ‘real’ on TikTok. They want real life, not reels.” She prefers to create her content in TikTok and then use a tool called Repurpose.io which removes the TikTok watermark and automatically posts to Instagram and YouTube. It makes it easy to repost your TikTok content to reels, and automatically uploads the content to Google Drive and Pinterest. It is a paid tool, but she says it’s worth it because it’s a huge time saver and is growing her YouTube audience as well.
Don’t forget about SEO.
Additionally, Rachel adds you need to search TikTok and look for the keywords that people are searching for, and purposely include these in your screen captions. She says, if you’re doing that, you’ll get better results. Like any other platform, it’s important to think about what kind of content people want to see, as opposed to just creating the content you want to share. So, using search terms is essential.
What about trends?
She’s not a fan of TikTok trends, because trying to keep up with trending audio or sounds all the time can cause a lot of stress and anxiety. She often advises business owners not to worry about following trends, it’s more important to make a habit of posting content, keep it regular, and try and post every week. She says if you want to do a trending video for fun, then go for it, but if you don’t have the capacity, then you don’t need to worry about trends to get results.
You might think that your target audience isn’t using TikTok, but with approximately 1 billion users worldwide, Rachel reassures you they are. The average length of time a person spends on TikTok is approximately two hours a day, and 97% of videos are seen by someone who’s never seen them before. So, it’s the best place to reach a new audience.
Written by Kristine Aitchison: Guest Writer & Content Specialist
Kristine is an experienced content writer, specialising in marketing and communications. Showcase your expertise with regular blog content. Visit morethanmerewords.nz.
