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#TikTokmademebuyit- How to get started with the world’s fastest growing social medium

Gary Osborne, Insight & Brand Planning Specialist

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The international growth of TikTok seems to know no bounds. Only in existence since 2017, it’s overtaken Facebook as the world’s most downloaded app and has now crossed the one billion monthly active user mark. Irish numbers are also impressive. The platform has up to 1.8M users per month here according to figures from August of 2021, with about 1M of these identifying as female.  The majority of these, 992,000 are aged 18-24 with 25-34 year olds numbering a further 450,000. (Kennedy, 2021)

TikTok is a video first medium and marketers are learning that ‘as seen on TikTok’ is quickly becoming the new ‘as seen on TV’. Videos are generally 15-60 seconds long. When the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt can secure up to 6.1 billion views it's hard to ignore its influence on marketing and particularly those with limited budgets would be unwise to ignore this. TikTokers want to entertain, be entertained and have fun. They don’t want to be ‘advertised at’ so content producers that create engaging stories are likely to be rewarded. (Lewis, 2021)

What does all this mean for food & drink marketers?

There are a few of steps to help get started with creating interesting content for TikTok that will help get brands noticed. The good news is that it’s a very forgiving medium. The emphasis is on fun so bloopers are actually a good thing!

  1. Be genuine about telling your story.

Show viewers behind the scenes footage of how the brand came into existence and the production process involved.  People love to know the characters and processes that went into bringing the brand to life. Meeting staff members, suppliers and other happy consumers can be part of this.

 

  1. Hashtags are your friend.

Don’t make the error of leaving out relevant tags such as #food, #cooking and others directly relevant to your category. Insider top tips also include using tags such as #fyp and #foryoupage.  These make videos more attractive to the TikTok algorithm. Content will appear on the general ‘For You Page’ – where all videos can be seen regardless of whether the user follows the account or not.

 

  1. Roll it there Collette!

The point has already been made that no-one expects perfect production values, particularly from smaller brands. However, investing some time and effort into some of the basics like lighting and tripods will pay dividends. These don’t have to break the bank.

 

 

References:

Kennedy, J (2021) What social media platforms are winning in Ireland

Lewis, A (2021) How to use TikTok for your Food Business

Adhikari, S (2021) TikTok Now Has More than 1 Billion Users Globally