TikTok has evolved massively over the past year or so. It is no longer a user-to-user platform – we have seen how TikTok optimises and prioritises branded content without taking away the native experiences that everyday users enjoy. If your brand is not part of the TikTok realm, you are missing out on discovering your key audiences, gaining mass brand awareness and amplifying your conversions. Unlike other social media platforms, TikTok has a better success rate when shifting customers from the awareness stage to purchase without any media budget involved IF you play your cards right when it comes to your organic posting strategy.
Based on TikTok’s recommendations and our testing and learnings on the platform, we present the Four Fundamental S’s of TikTok.
What are the 4s:
- Spark: This is the awareness stage where you ‘spark joy’ and get people excited about your brand or product.
- Share: This is where you inspire viewers to co-create or join in with you. Create moments for joy to be shared between brand and user or vice versa.
- Spike: Here is where content creation should accelerate to spike views by branching out into different content pillars and angles.
- Sustain: This is where the brand continues to engage its audience and maintain the community they have built.
It is essential to know that these 4s can be used together to form a large-scale campaign or be done individually, depending on your campaign objective.
To get a better understanding of how each of the 4S works, here is a chart to help you.
1. SPARK: COLLABORATE WITH TIKTOK CREATORS
Established creators on TikTok already understand what their viewers expect from their videos and have got the hang of tailoring video content to fit TikTok’s video standards. This is a great collaboration opportunity to see your brand in its most valid form by millions of users.
Case Study: PrettyLittleThing, a global fashion brand, regularly uses TikTok creators to create mass awareness for branding and new launches. In this video example, they collaborated with Alyssa Mckay has over 9.4 million followers on the platform that aimed to get visibility on their clothing range. The video was paired with audio that mentions “Pretty Little Thing” to increase brand recall natively.
The results: 292.3K likes, 9171 comments and 541 shares.
Best Practises:
- Use the Creator Marketplace tool to find creators who suit your brand.
- Get the creator to tag your brand’s TikTok profile in their caption and pin a comment mentioning your brand.
- Give creators the freedom to show the product as they want.
2. SHARE: CREATE OR JOIN HASHTAG CHALLENGES
Creating a branded hashtag challenge requires a large marketing budget and the support of TikTok’s internal team. You will receive your own dedicated Hashtag Challenge page and a pop-up on the Discover Page, where your campaign will be featured for two months. Thanks to TikTok’s robust algorithm, the more users interact with your unique hashtag, the more it will appear on the For You page.
Joining a hashtag challenge is more straightforward and can be easily integrated into your everyday organic content on TikTok. Joining a hashtag challenge allows you to get discovered by audiences. Again, thanks to the algorithm, if users watch your whole video, they are likely to see other content from you on their For You page in the future.
Case Study: Sephora Asia continuously joins existing viral challenges for awareness and to make its brand seem more relatable and personable. In this example, Sephora Asia joined the #MarryMe challenge.
The results: 13.6K likes, 189 comments and 1733 shares
Best Practises:
- For large-scale campaigns, create your hashtag challenge.
- Remember when creating your challenge: the more effortless the challenge, the more people will participate. Please keep it simple!
- Incorporate hashtag challenges that are already viral into your organic content plan.
3. SPIKE: FILL UP THE PAGE WITH JOYFUL CONTENT
Similar to other social media platforms, having different content pillars is recommended. Content pillars should be the foundation of your content strategy, comprised of broad topics and themes derived from understanding your audience and their needs. Not everyone relates to content the same way, so it is up to the brand to create meaningful content to help users while at the same time making it a fun experience to watch.
Case Study: Sephora Asia
Sephora Asia created a TikTok series during the pandemic called “If you want to smell like…”. This video series sought to match different fragrances with a vibe/mood so that users who were not allowed to remove their masks to test out the fragrance had a new way of envisioning perfumes. This was a great way to help consumers make their perfume purchasing decisions without having to physically out the product.
The result: 21.5K likes, 219 comments and 720 shares
Best Practices:
- Point out a problem and show how your product solves it.
- Make sure your content blends in with the style of the ‘For You’ page – professionally shot footage are discouraged.
- Other content angles to consider are ASMR videos and transformation videos.
4. SUSTAIN: ENGAGE WITH YOUR COMMUNITY
Once you have built your community, you need to sustain it. One way is to create content based on what your viewers want to see. This can help you convert viewers into buyers. Not only does the user feel like the brand is paying attention to their concerns, but showing how your product works in the video can also encourage users to purchase it.
TikTok has this great function that makes community management more personal. You can tag a comment to a video that notifies users who asked the question. This response is also seen in the previous video where the statement was asked.
Case Study: Genoa Skin
Genoa Skin, a small business, frequently responds to users’ comments through video replies to help them through their purchasing journey while sustaining a relationship with them as a whole. In this example, while showcasing their product, they provide helpful content responding to a user’s concern.
The result: 1.3K likes, 12 comments and 32 shares
Best Practices:
- Reply to all comments if possible.
- Pick out the question that is constantly being asked or has a lot of likes and replies by tagging the comment to a new video you create.
Now that you have learned about the four essential S’ to build a successful and meaningful TikTok organic strategy, the next step is to start creating content!
