Since its inception in 2016, Tik Tok has rapidly evolved to be one of the most frequently used social media apps by Generation Z. If you haven’t yet heard about Tik Tok, it’s only a matter of time before you find yourself stumbling across a viral Tik Tok post, with an impressive amount of engagement to follow. According to Hootsuite, the app has over 800 million monthly users and presents a new and innovative way for businesses to promote their brand and obtain high levels of organic reach. If you’re searching for the next smart marketing move to make, Tik Tok might just be your answer. Learn how to use Tik Tok for business. What is Tik Tok? Tik Tok is a casual, fun and quirky social media app invented by Chinese company ByteDance. The app is most popular amongst teenagers, more specifically, those aged between 16-24. Tik Tok users are able to create short-form videos, incorporating hit songs, voice-overs and a variety of filters and lenses. Users have fun with the app and create humorous videos, dance challenges, prank challenges or just share anything they think other Tik Tok users would find enjoyable to watch. Content shared on Tik Tok is typically shot from users own smartphones, which means the quality of videos shared is authentic and real, unlike other social media platforms which utilise professional videographers.  The best part about Tik Tok is how easy it is to obtain high levels of views and engagement. By utilising the right hashtags, you could find your videos obtaining thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views. How can Tik Tok benefit your business? Tik Tok is still relatively new to the social media marketing world. Marketers are still analysing the app in order to determine how to create the ideal strategy for the platform. While Tik Tok might not be useful for all businesses, those who have a target audience resembling those of the Tik Tok user demographic can benefit greatly from using the app. It’s one of the quickest and cost-efficient ways to promote your business and receive traction from a massive audience if your strategy is implemented correctly. Businesses are able to obtain results almost instantly by sharing content which appeals to Tik Tok users. How do you know if Tik Tok is right for your business? The first thing you need to do is research the app. Look at videos on the for you page and see which videos are gaining the most engagement. Could you see your brand creating similar content? If your brand promotes fun, relaxed, light-hearted vibes, then Tik Tok can certainly work for you. Tik Tok users are quite creative with their posts and often start dance challenges or prank challenges incorporating hashtags that prompt other users to do the same. It creates a fun, social movement of a sort. Get creative! You could even create short demo videos, showing how your product works or if you’re in the fashion industry, you could create try on haul videos where you show how the clothing looks on real people. Similarly to Instagram, you can utilise influencers on Tik Tok to promote your brand.  What’s important to remember, is even if you are paying people to promote your product, it shouldn’t look like an ad. Businesses that have done well on Tik Tok have done so by creating campaigns that appear raw, real and give the perception they aren’t trying to sell to consumers. So keep your videos fun, creative and remember to stay active. Tik Tok advertisements Responding to the high demand of businesses incorporating Tik Tok into their social media marketing strategy, the app has recently introduced ads. In the same method, you can create a business account on Instagram, you can now do so via Tik Tok. While the app is still relatively new to paid advertising, it’s a great time for marketers to get behind the app and obtain good visibility. There are four main types of ads available: Infeed native content:  These ads will appear in the newsfeed of the for you page. Brand takeover These ads appear once the user first opens the app and essentially take over the app for the duration of the ad, leading to a newsfeed video. Hashtag challenges Hashtag challenge ads appear on the discovery page and encourage users to participate in the challenge. Branded lenses Branded lenses are available for users to add to their videos and are developed by the brand. In order to measure the effectiveness of Tik Tok advertisements, track the engagement of your posts and CTRs (Click through rates). Tik Tok has grown immensely over the past four years and has already overtaken competing apps such as LinkedIn and Snapchat in terms of monthly active users. If you’re thinking of taking your social media marketing to the next level, there’s no better time than now to consider Tik Tok.