TikTok: A Resource for Small Business

For many small businesses, social media can bring significant value. It can allow businesses to engage with customers in a cost-effective way, collect and track customer engagement, gain insight into competition, and develop and grow their brand.

Because of these advantages, many small businesses now utilize one or more of the many social media platforms out there – LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, to name a few of the most popular. TikTok, a relatively new social media platform, has also started to grow in popularity. 

In case you’re not familiar with it, TikTok is a social media platform consisting of short, user-generated video clips. The types of video clips on the app run the gamut, from lip syncing and dancing to popular songs, to comedy skits, to vlogs, to food and drink videos, to medical providers answering questions about their fields of practice, and to everything in between – including small business looking to interact with customers and grow their businesses.

Although growing, the platform is easy to overlook as a valuable business tool, especially due to its newness and fairly young consumer base, but you may want to consider incorporating TikTok into your current marketing strategy. Here’s a few interesting stats/reasons why:

1. TikTok is in 200 countries and has a massive user base, with 2 billion global downloads as of August 2020 and 689 million global active users as of January 2021.
2. As of June 2020, 91.9 million Americans used TikTok every month, and 50 million used the app every day.
3. TikTok ranks as the second largest app in consumer spend.
   

Here’s another reason: TikTok itself is committed to launching, supporting and growing small businesses using its app. It has a pretty neat website dedicated to sharing best practices, resources and tools, as well as some cool TikTok small business success stories highlighting its growing base of small business users. TikTok also recently launched its first ever “Small Biz Block Party,” a 20-event series of (free) interactive workshops throughout the country in which small business owners can get together and learn how to build communities and grow on TikTok. You can learn more about the Small Biz Block Party here.

Consider whether you can leverage TikTok to help grow your business. I might event be a future customer – I have spent some time on TikTok and have purchased products after first learning about them on the app. (I may have also learned a dance or two…although if asked to confirm, I will vehemently deny.)