TikTok Tips and Best Practices for Brands in 2022

Social media moves quickly, and as a brand, it can be hard to keep up. 

When updating your TikTok strategy for 2022, you’ll want to blend some timeless strategies with current trends to connect with your audience in new ways. Read on for our best TikTok tips to make a splash in the new year. 

Be Informal

TikTok’s own motto for brands is: “Don’t make ads, make TikToks.” As a whole, TikTok works as a platform for less polished, more authentic content. Take this as an opportunity to produce more informal, off-the-cuff, laid-back clips showcasing your brand’s personality. Whether this looks like truly candid moments or scripted clips that just have the feel of being less formal, taking a nonchalant approach will have you fitting right into TikTok’s culture.

Use Audio

Audio is a pivotal part of TikTok, as 88% of users cite sound as essential to the TikTok experience. 

Tactics like using trending audios and producing videos that are dual audio-visual experiences for your followers bring in results: a Kantar study found that ads with audio on TikTok boosted both brand favorability and purchase intent, a major win for any brands seeking conversions. 

Brand accounts can use a plethora of trending audio tracks from TikTok’s royalty-free Commercial Audio Library, but if you’re feeling extra creative you can also create your own TikTok sound to feature any original music, voiceovers or company jingles! Just make sure to steer clear of copyrighted music to avoid any legal hot water. 

Use Entertainment and Humor

In a majority of TikToks, entertaining = funny. Many brands have found success here by making jokes about themselves, often leaning into their perceived public personas for laughs. 

For example, language learning app Duolingo and their trademark owl mascot, Duo, have long been the butt of jokes about their aggressive push notifications upon missing a lesson. As a result, their TikTok account is full of content poking fun at Duo for being a troublemaker and replying to comments with lighthearted threats.

If comedy isn’t your thing, however, no need to panic. The key to being entertaining is to cater to what jives with your brand personality and with what your audience likes, and that can mean content that is informative, interesting, or otherwise valuable. 

Humor has a major place at the TikTok table, but if it isn’t meshing with your brand image or you’re struggling to make it feel authentic, leaning into a different route of entertainment is perfectly fine.

Connect With Your Audience’s Values

TikTok is a place for humor and wit, but it’s also a place for genuine connection and conversation. Maybe you’re a clothing brand with expanded sizes projecting a body-positive message, or a makeup brand on a mission to change the narrative that people with acne have to go full coverage. Whatever your position, taking a more humanitarian approach in your content can spark real connection with consumers, who love to know that you hold the same values that they do.

Engage With Others

You’ve likely heard to engage with comments on your own posts, but scrolling through TikTok and leaving comments on other posts can greatly increase both your brand’s presence and personality. 

Check your brand’s “mentions” frequently as well; if people are tagging your brand in the comments of some other video, it’s a huge sign that you should get in there and join the conversation. 

Lots of brands on TikTok are learning that cracking a joke in the comments can draw lots of good press; take, for example, these brands in the comments of one of @jongraz’s infamous “Bones or No Bones” videos: 

Create Community, Not Conversions

Put simply, TikTok is not all about sales and conversions. Rather, TikTok is a place to build community, to hold conversations and to share your brand’s personality. 

As we mentioned above, connecting with your audience’s values is crucial to building a relationship with your followers, whether you choose humorous or heartfelt content to achieve that goal. 

Too often, brands get caught up in the end goal of making a sale, but on TikTok, those middle steps of brand awareness, brand trust and genuine interaction matter — a lot. 

Don’t forget about your audience in pursuit of a click.

Partner With Creators

Who says you have to do all the work of growing your TikTok presence yourself? 

Partnering with TikTok creators is an efficient way to increase your brand awareness and reach new audiences. Plus, you’ll get the added benefit of authentic product posts from consumers, whom people tend to trust more than brands. 

Creator content is also perfect user-generated content to reuse within your social media content, website, or anywhere else in your marketing funnel! Just make sure you get permission from the creator before reposting.

Finding, pitching and contracting with TikTok creators all on your own can rake in incredible benefits, but it can also be a drain on crucial company resources like time and energy. 

Want to reap the benefits, without the heavy lifting? We match you with real content creators based on your target audience and goals, ship them your product and then compile all the results for you. If you’re ready to discover how we can up your TikTok game in 2022, give our consumer-to-consumer marketing experts a shout today.