As a B2B business, should you go near TikTok in your social media marketing campaign? The platform has a very different personality from a lot of other platforms. It’s playful; it came from dancing videos, true. But TikTok is also a source of advice and inspiration. Whether it’s cleaning or designing, TikTok can inform you about it. It can even show you how to sort your finances, get a side hustle, or even start a business – and that’s where you come in. We’re asking if you can bypass TikTok as a B2B company, and we’ve ultimately come to the decision that you can, but you might regret it. Take a look at our guide to find out why.
The Communities
The thing about TikTok that really separates it from other social media platforms isn’t the short-form video format but the fact that it brought back communities. With a better algorithm, TikTok has managed to allow you to carve out a place where people find their people. This is a concept mostly lost aside on Facebook and Reddit. But both of them do so inorganically. You have to go looking for your people, whereas TikTok takes educated guesses and shows you your people. This is useful for B2B marketing channels, as your audience will naturally come across your items or services and wonder how they can apply them to their business. This means you have little pockets of audiences that you can target with your TikTok content and carve away from the B2C users better. Target people watching entrepreneurs, looking up business insights, searching for #hustle, and more.
The Affiliates
And at the head of all of these communities is a collection of affiliates. Influencers, and even better, micro-influencers, tend to be more niche, but they are at the head of a community of dedicated followers. These users see the micro-influencers they follow as like them, so they have more of an inclination to give the products and services they are recommended a go. As for B2B, this means that there are a lot of start-up entrepreneurs and small business owners gathering advice from the leaders of these niches, which is prime for you to then offer a product for them to recommend.
The Personal Touch
It’s no secret that the latest generation of users is a whole other kettle of fish. And it isn’t limited to only Gen Z, who, it must be noted, are starting to get into the workforce. This new generation of users is part activist, so they like to see an ethical business that runs well, appreciates its employees, and has a diverse team. On TikTok, you can make content that allows you to put all those feet forward and shows a more personable side to your business. We’ve learned that being personable doesn’t need to mean being unprofessional, so the occasional TikTok showing what your team is up to this month is a great way to appeal to users.
The Drawback
The main drawback of using TikTok is that it takes more work. TikTok is very different from a lot of social media platforms. A lot of business marketing campaigns can boil down to a photo and a captain posted on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and the marketing team can call it a day. TikTok features short-form video content. Although it has photo options, they’re often ignored for videos and just result in memes. This will mean that your team needs to put time and energy into making a short video rather than a photo or graphic, which can put extra strain on your team.
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