Welcome to Section Nine: Expanding Your Reach! Building a following requires more than just great content; it demands strategic promotion and networking. We’ll explore how to connect with brands and fellow creators, capitalize on viral trends, and deeply engage with the niche communities that drive TikTok’s success.
9. Expanding Your Reach
Finding Collaboration Opportunities with Brands and Influencers
Networking and collaboration are crucial for determining longevity on TikTok. The most successful TikTokers connect, cross-promote, and grow together.
1. Using Official and Third-Party Platforms: You don’t have to wait for brands to come to you. You can utilize dedicated platforms to find collaborations:
• TikTok Creator Marketplace (TCM): This is TikTok’s primary platform designed to connect brands with creators for paid sponsored content and affiliate campaigns. TCM removes the “awkwardness” of setting up partnerships, acting almost like an influencer agency.
• Shopify Collabs: This is a similar tool that connects creators with brands specifically looking to boost awareness.
• TikTok One: This platform allows creators, advertisers, and brands to collaborate directly on TikTok.
• External Platforms: You can find campaigns to apply to (whether paid or gifted) on third-party platforms like Aspire IQ. Tools like Brand24 can even be used as an influencer marketing platform to help discover potential collaborators.
2. Strategic Networking and Pitching: When seeking partnerships, think like an entrepreneur.
• Look to Your Niche Neighbors: Study other successful creators in your niche and see what brands they are partnering with, as these brands are likely looking for more influencers.
• The Cross-Promotion Effect: Collaborating with another creator allows both audiences to merge, potentially doubling your visibility.
• Pitching: When reaching out directly to brands, try to collect the emails of decision-makers (tools like Clearbit can help). While you should have a Media Kit ready to send—which highlights your best assets like high engagement rates, audience demographics, and case studies—you should not include your rates in the media kit, as this reduces negotiation power.
• Showcase Your Work: If you are a newer creator, you can build a portfolio by creating non-sponsored TikTok videos about brands you love, making them exactly as you would if they were sponsored content.
How to Participate in Viral Trends and Challenges to Gain Exposure
Challenges and trends are core features of TikTok’s thriving community culture. Joining a trend is a powerful strategy to gain new exposure because it connects you with new audiences under a common theme.
• Monitor Trends Daily: Stay up-to-date by exploring the Discover tab to identify trending sounds, hashtags, and challenges. You can use the TikTok Creative Center to find trending songs, sounds, and themes by region.
• Use Trending Sounds and Music: Using trending sounds or music can help make your videos more discoverable. Videos with background music receive an average of 98% more views than those without.
• Speed Over Perfection: The trend cycle moves incredibly quickly on TikTok. If participating in a trend is part of your strategy, publishing fast is more important than waiting until the video is 100% perfect.
• Participation: Users love taking up a challenge, which often begins with a hashtagged name. Users can participate in a hashtag challenge with just a few clicks.
• Encourage Challenges: Users appreciate it when brands create new challenges, trends, or memes.
Engaging with Niche Communities within TikTok
The way TikTok’s algorithm works makes it even more important to engage with specific subcultures than on other platforms. Longevity in your career is often determined by the sustained relationships built within these groups.
• The Power of Community: The algorithm favors content that deeply resonates within a niche community (known as micro-virality), amplifying visibility among these engaged audiences. TikTok users are four times more likely to say TikTok is the best platform for being part of a community.
• Identify Your Subculture: Niche communities often congregate around specific hashtags (like #BookTok or #STEMTok). Brands are encouraged to join these special interest groups.
• Use Analytics for Discovery: You can use the Audience Insights tool (available through TikTok Ads Manager) to find your specific subculture by identifying the interests and hashtags most relevant to your target audience.
• Engage Meaningfully: Once you find your community, engage with them.
◦ Respond to Comments: Engaging with your audience in the comments section tells the algorithm you are an account worth showing on the FYP. Businesses should use the comments section to better understand their audience.
◦ Respond with Video: You can use the video reply feature to address comments or questions on your previous posts. These videos often do well because they are shown to everyone who watched the original post containing the comment.
◦ Authenticity: Networking on TikTok thrives on authenticity over perfection. People connect with real stories, not scripted content.
• Private Networking: Dedicated private communities, such as tiktoknetworking, have emerged to provide a trusted environment for creators to connect, share resources, and discuss growth strategies with others in their niche, moving beyond the cluttered DMs of the public platform.