It’s crazy to think that TikTok wasn’t a “thing” just a few years ago, and now it’s essentially taken over pop culture.

 

TikTok, an app originally designed for lip-syncing, has grown into a powerful social network primarily for Gen Zers. These teenagers and early twenties participate in challenges, duets, and synchronized dances, among other activities, to share with friends and virtual strangers.

 

TikTok has only grown since becoming a quarantine hit last year, reaching 100 million monthly active US users.

 

 

Even if you aren’t a TikTok fan, chances are that at least some of your target audience is using the app or is familiar with it.

 

TikTok: What Is It and How Does It Work?

 

   TikTok is a video-sharing app where users can share short videos with music or original sounds. To increase exposure, users can also add stickers, filters, and lenses to their videos and post using hashtags.

 

TikTok is frequently compared to Vine, the short-lived (but never forgotten) short-format video app acquired by Twitter before its demise. (However, you can still watch Vine compilations on YouTube, including this one, which is one of my personal favorites.)

 

When you open TikTok on your mobile device, it automatically begins playing videos with audio. These videos are in your For You tab, which will begin to personalize based on your interactions with the app. In a separate tab labeled Following, you can also follow users and view their most recent videos. You can “heart” videos as you watch them, which adds them to your personal repository, and you can comment or share them.

 

To add a video to TikTok, simply click the plus button, take or upload a video, and select music to overlay the video. You can then add your content and hashtags. Hashtags are important for searching, trending, and appearing in the For You tab, but so is the music or sound you choose.

 

Users can also make their own sounds, which others can use to duet or create their own videos. 

 

What You Need to Know About TikTok Marketing for Small Businesses

 

You may be wondering why you should care about TikTok as a business owner, especially if your demographic is not Gen Z. Let’s look at the most important facts about TikTok marketing for your business.

How popular is TikTok?

 

We know TikTok has grown significantly since 2020, but the actual figures are somewhat shocking:

• TikTok was the most downloaded app in 2020, with 310 million downloads in just the first three months.
• In the first quarter of 2021, TikTok continued to be the top downloaded app.
• TikTok has 800 million monthly active users, making it the sixth-largest social network.
• In the United States, there are 100 million monthly active users.

While lockdown orders and quarantine appeared to aid in the app’s popularity, it has only grown and shows no signs of slowing.

 

Who Uses TikTok?

 

 

It may surprise you to learn that TikTok’s demographics have expanded beyond teenagers.

 

The ten-to-nineteen-year-old demographic accounts for the majority of users (25%), but the 20-to-29-year-old and 30-to-39-year-old demographics are not far behind at just over 20% each.

 

This is a change from 2020, when teens made up nearly 35% of TikTok’s user base, implying that as TikTok grows, more of your demographic may begin using the app.

 

TikTok: How Do People Use It?

 

People have been spending record amounts of time on their phones in the last year, with TikTok accounting for a large portion of that time. Consider the following usage statistics:

 

• 90% of TikTok users open the app more than once per day — on average, eight times per day.
• Every day, the average user spends nearly an hour on the app.
• TikTok receives 1 billion video views per day.

So it’s clear that people are using the app frequently and at high rates, emphasizing the importance of becoming acquainted with TikTok whether you intend to use it to market your business or not.

 

Conclusion

 

Whether TikTok is a good fit for your company right now or not, it’s an important trend to keep an eye on if you want to keep engaging with and reaching customers. Furthermore, as TikTok grows in popularity, the likelihood that you’ll need a presence on the app grows as well.

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