While it's not the right fit for every company or influencer, Marla explores why TikTok could be a great tool to highlight your brand personality. She also discusses what questions your social media team should be able to answer before launching, and the three brands who are crushing it on the FYP.
Show Notes:
Must-follow brands: Tarte Cosmetics, Duolingo, and The Empire State Building Instagram: marlarose__ LinkedIn: 212 Communications
While it's not the right fit for every company or influencer, Marla explores why TikTok could be a great tool to highlight your brand personality. She also discusses what questions your social media team should be able to answer before launching, and the three brands who are crushing it on the FYP.
Show Notes:
Must-follow brands: Tarte Cosmetics, Duolingo, and The Empire State Building Instagram: marlarose__ LinkedIn: 212 Communications
Welcome back to Not your Parents PR. My name is Marla, I will be your host for today and I am really excited to talk to you about one of my favorite social media apps to sit and scroll on Tiktok. So if your brand is considering joining Tiktok, I definitely think it's a great idea. And, to kick us off, here are a few reasons why it might make sense for your brand to make a Tiktok account. So, number one it's a fantastic opportunity to either reinforce or establish your brand personality.
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Tiktok allows for a lot of runway to have fun, to showcase a side of you that might not jump off on your website or another social media channel. It's a great opportunity to show consumers your funny side, your serious side, anything that can make yourself more relatable to your consumer. Number two it is a great way to explain to users how to use your product. This is especially helpful for CPG brands. Anything in the makeup industry, for instance, you know seeing videos where people are showing you how to use your latest concealer or shade of lipstick properly. It's great for clothing brands and it could be great for cleaning products. Any way that you can show your consumer how you can use their product and their day to day lives is so helpful. Number three, which kind of ties back into my first point, but it's a great opportunity to tap into your relatability as a brand. Again, no one wants to work with a brand that feels stuffy or non approachable, so it's a great way to show consumers that there are humans behind the brand.
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Number four it is a cool opportunity to partner with influencers. I do not need to tell you that every single brand on the planet probably wants to work with Alex Earl, right Like she is so popular right now. She's probably getting a million asks a day. But Alex Earl is not your only influencer that you can partner with. It is a good opportunity to partner with micro and macro influencers. I'll use the example of a food company. Let's say you created a stainless steel frying pan. Obviously you want to connect with food influencers, so what you could do simply is type in the search bar and tick tock foodies, food recipes, and then find influencers that align with your brand values and see if they're open to partnerships.
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And lastly, number five I think this might be one of the coolest ways to use tick tock. It is a great way to show your office culture or your company culture, I think, especially if you're working in office. I see so many brands are doing days in the lives of office workers. They're filming people in the office or they might have an HR director come on and talk about their policies and benefits. It's really a great way to show not only what it would be like to buy the product and use it, but what it might be like to work there as well, and you can post if you're hiring. So those are just a few reasons why it might make sense for your brand to hop on tick tock.
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Okay now, before you launch on tick tock so let's say you've met with the marketing team you decide we are going on tick tock. What's happening? Before you do, you should ask yourself and your team a few questions just to make sure it's definitely something you want to commit to. So number one ask is your team able to post several times a week? I say this because what I've just seen observationally on TikTok is that the most successful brands and influencers are ones that are posting several times a day. And while that might not be the most feasible ask for you and your team, I would say posting at least two to five times a week to start, it's so important to make sure that you are gaining visibility with your target audience, so just make sure you're able to post several times a week, both with evergreen content or planned content that you've scheduled in advance, and timely content as well, which brings me to my next point. Can you be timely? This is something to consider, especially if you work in a large corporation that tends to have lengthy approval processes. Either set up the infrastructure in your company to make approval processes for social media quicker, or think through your strategy here. A way that you might be able to be creative on TikTok is using copy that already exists on your website to talk it out, so that it doesn't have to go through as much of a legal process, but something to keep in mind.
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And next question can you let your hair down? Can you relax? Can you be casual? I think so many consumers on TikTok tend to be younger, I would say probably more Gen Z, and I think they can see through an advertisement right away. So don't be afraid to not be perfect, to not be polished. I think the content that users tend to gravitate towards is the more relaxed content. So just think if there are ways that you can again show your personality, be more human. It's a human platform. You have to act like a human. And, lastly, ask if your team is familiar with editing tools such as CapCut or directly on the TikTok platform itself. And it's just good to know, as you plan out your content for the month, if you're doing a healthy mix of different effects.
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And yeah, so now I am going to move on to three brands that I think are crushing it on TikTok and they always make me smile, and I'm going to use brands that have mascots. So a company mascot is something that I think is a tool that social media managers are really leaning into. I think it's so fun to have a mascot for your brand because it's pretty unexpected. It creates an amazing visual. You have one costume and you can use it over and over, again and again. It brings that lighthearted appeal to your brand personality. So first up, I'm going to go with Tarte Cosmetics. I love their concealer, by the way, they have a giant tube of their concealer as their mascot and the mascot will do funny day in the life videos with a funny automated voice. It will show you what life is like in the office. It's great, it's fun, it's playful and it's free advertising for the brand itself, because you can see the mascot walking around the city.
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Even people on the street who might not follow them on TikTok are still getting a little taste of their brand. Yeah, no complaints. I don't think I even need to say it DuLingo that is one of the most creative accounts I have ever seen on social media. I know many would agree. Dulingo has a giant bird mascot. That is absolutely hilarious. Not afraid to take risks shows office culture. Whoever is doing their social media just deserves a million gold stars. They are really quick to be on time with pop culture content. It really shows the fun side of the brand and it's a language learning app. It's something that is so important and they crush it. They absolutely crush it. I don't have much to say. Everyone should go follow them on TikTok, and they often partner with influencers too. They do a fantastic job of bringing influencers into the office and making cool content with them.
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Okay, number three kind of an oddball and I love it. So I am from New York originally, so I always love a good New York account, and I don't know if you know this, but the Empire State Building has a phenomenal TikTok account. So they took their mascot to the next level and did it in such a creative, ingenious way. So, instead of a costume, instead of a physical mascot, they take a photo of the Empire State Building and they impose a face on it and they'll essentially look like the Empire State Building is talking. So low cost, completely low cost. It's hilarious. You know right away who's speaking. It's the Empire State Building, and they make the most hilarious content and it just, it simply works, and I know they're onto big things, so everyone should give them a follow. Okay, so those are the three brands that I think are crushing it on TikTok right now, and some last little lingering tips I want to leave you with as you are building your TikTok account.
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Number one keep your content short and sweet. They don't have to be long videos. You can make them short and funny, even if you just want to do a little funny dance or use trending audio in a way that relates to your brand. Keep it short, keep it sweet. It can be simple. Next, just lean into trending audio, so you will find, as you scroll on your For you page, that there'll be certain sounds, whether they be from pop culture or songs, that are used again and again. I don't need to tell you that every time a Taylor Swift album drops, it's going to be used as a sound over and over again on TikTok. So just get ahead of new releases like that.
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Third, I want to talk about stitches. So stitches is when you create your own video on top of a previous video, so you can keep your eye out for that on the For you page or see what other brands you follow are using as their stitches, because it's really funny as a community to build off of something that a large majority already finds funny and entertaining. Next, I would say watch, sit and spend maybe 10 minutes a day watching videos, seeing what other people are doing. Observe the culture, see what brands in your industry are jumping on, what they might be staying away from. Watch and whatever content is resonating with you and your team. Tap into that, and that's when the magic will happen. Lastly, make your content your own. Just because one brand is doing the same song and dance doesn't mean you need to do it too. There are so many creative ways and angles you can take on existing content or trends and just make it your own. Okay, that is it, everyone on my little TikTok speech.
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Next, I just wanna thank our holiday sponsor. Again, these are fake products, but we're gonna do fake sponsors until someone pays us. But today's fake sponsor is going to be Affirmation Candle. Every 30 minutes, the Affirmation Candle changes scent and an audio recording is released of someone giving you a positive affirmation to keep going in your work day. So it might say good job, you got this. Breathe in, breathe out, and they make great gifts for the holidays. Again, it's getting colder. Bundle up with an affirmation candle, you can use the code burnout for 10% off at checkout. Thank you so much for listening. Have a good one, follow us on Instagram, follow us on LinkedIn and have a good one. Bye.