How To Use TikTok Trends For Your Business

By now, pretty much everyone has either heard of TikTok, has an account they scroll through daily or is obsessed with posting videos at every spare moment. The app now boasts over 1 billion monthly active users. It’s one of the fastest-growing social media platforms and is perfect for creating more relaxed, consumable and relatable content for your brand.

The key with TikTok marketing, which we’ve written about previously, is to educate your consumer whilst keeping them hooked. But it’s also important to keep abreast of trends to heighten your chances of your videos being picked up by algorithms and being seen by more people. But how do you use TikTok trends for a business? Read on and we’ll delve into this.

1. Use Trending Audios

If it’s not broken, why fix it? We all know the phrase and now popular ‘TikTok-kers’ are emanating it too.

Trending audios are sounds that have been tried, tested, and have come out victorious, many of them garnering millions of views for videos that use that specific audio. The engagement for videos that use these popular audios is often much higher than other lesser-known sounds so, why not capitalise on it too?

Come up with your own little twist on the trend or even just follow the masses and fully embrace the trend, but just note, that these fast and fun trends can flip like a switch. Make sure you (or your social media agency) are keeping up-to-date with the latest audios; it will help keep users engaged and interactive with your account.

2. Try Out Popular Filters

TikTok filters can be a rabbit hole easily led down. Fear not though. These filters can be many things; sometimes fun and sweet, sometimes weird and whacky, and sometimes downright scary, however one thing you can be sure of is that a large chunk of the most popular filters can up your Tik Tok game dramatically. They can easily take a boring video and transform it into a viral sensation.

Use your imagination and the sky is the limit with these filters, many of which will be regularly used time and again in the most popular videos popping up in everyone’s feeds.

You might think that these filters aren’t appropriate for businesses, but thinking outside the box can seamlessly shoehorn your brand into the latest trends – think of RyanAir for example, that took the eyes and mouth filter and ran with it – in fact, they pretty much own it now.

3. Have Fun And Be Brave

Without a doubt, the most successful businesses pages on TikTok are not the ones focused squarely on promoting their product. Why would anyone choose to follow a never ending ad?

The pages that hit the jackpot are always the ones with the most character. They will introduce you to their way of work, their customers, and their colleagues. After scrolling through these accounts, you should feel like they have a personality of their own. One account who encapsulates this perfectly is Innocent Smoothies. From behind the scenes moments to videos made solely so you can have a giggle, customers fell in love with their refreshing insight into the company and with over 100k followers it shows.

So, you need to inject as much life into your page as you can; interview your colleagues over silly things, run through the streets for the sake of that viral video. Go crazy, be funny, go off-track, take the mick out of yourselves; it truly is hard to go too far.

4. Tell A Story

TikTok videos are purposefully short. The average user spends over an hour and a half a day simply swiping through videos on the app but only a few seconds on each clip.

There’s no question to the fact; you need to stand out to make it, keeping users engaged when it could be so easy for them to swipe on past. It could be straightforward, like keeping the surprise, entertaining or shock factor of the video until the end, building their curiosity after hinting to it at the start. Or it could be deeper, such as detailing interesting parts of your lives, why you started your small business or even, the funny story of your after-work drinks on a Friday night.

Engagement is the key so, be relatable, be real and be personable.

5. Be Clever In Comments

Users on TikTok want to know you. Many successful accounts engage constantly with customers in their comments and even pop up in the comments of other businesses’ TikTok accounts. The comments tab on TikTok is used to convey a deeper understanding to videos and / or, more often than not, becoming a mini comedy show of one-liners.

Users love a quick sweep through the comments and will dive head-first, grinning, down rabbit holes of accounts if they find pages writing things that made them cackle. Ryanair, for example, is a master of both finesse and hilarity in TikTok comments. They promote the best version of their company all the while never forgoing their need to make people laugh at the teasing jokes they regularly drop in the comments, whether on their page or others.

They don’t ever underestimate the power of a good comment and the new level of engagement it can bring. You shouldn’t either.

6. Produce #ShareableContent

There’s not much more that will spark the interest of the social media generation than a challenge.

Challenges will often involve one account creating a video provoking users to attempt their own creative take on the video, completing the challenge and posting the video with the corresponding hashtag. Companies can grow their audience exponentially through this method. Chipotle created one challenge, in particular, that shot off; the #LidFlip challenge which watched users try flip the lid onto the bowl without using their hands. This saw their videos climb thousands of views that you could emulate, all you need is a bit of imagination and a catchy hashtag. No one can resist the challenge of competition nowadays!

First starting a TikTok account can feel incredibly daunting. However, once you jump in, you open up so many doors and opportunities you didn’t even realise were there, from expanding your audience to connecting with customers and showing a new side of the business. To find out about how we could help your business with this, pop us a message!