If you are no longer in high school, you might have felt very confused when you first heard about TikTok a year or two ago. Originally popular with the Gen Z crowd, it has gained traction among older age groups. In fact, more than half of its users are 30 years old or older! It has similarities to the late Vine (RIP, we miss you!) and many video compilations have been re-uploaded to other popular sites such as YouTube and Twitter. If you have decided to join in on the hype, which there is certainly no shortage of here in the City of Angels, then you might be asking yourself how you can properly utilize Los Angeles SEO to gain more traction. Fortunately, your awesome friends at Drive Traffic Media are here to help you! Just follow some of the tips we’ve compiled below to get you on the right track and “make every second count” today!

Tips to Optimize Your TikTok

Get smart about your profile

Take advantage of your profile to its fullest potential just as you would with any other platform – that means having a memorable username, profile picture, and linking your other accounts in your bio. Go ahead and use a primary keyword in that profile description, too!

Reposting videos from your other platforms

Cross-posting may initially sound like an unoriginal concept, but consider how many TikTok videos make their way to other sites, so doing the same thing but reversing it could be a good idea. It could help encourage your audience to check out your other pages. Granted, recycling too much content will become redundant, but think “everything in moderation” to help with your online branding strategy.

Pay close attention to the latest trends

Speaking of hashtags, the hottest ones will reveal what is trending at the moment, much like other platforms feature, and TikTok is a platform that is certainly not short of any trends. If you can play around with these every once in a while to promote your brand and create a brand new, engaging audience. It’s called social media for a reason! There is one challenge that comes with this, however, and that’s that you will need to act quickly with viral trends, as they tend to come and go within a few days. If you do decide to use TikTok, you will need to be on frequently to stay up-to-date (at least every few days).

We highly advise you not to overdo the trends, though, as jumping on every single bandwagon that comes around can make you appear desperate and uncreative. 

Trust me, you don’t wanna be like this guy:

It will ultimately be up to you to decide which trends are appropriate to take advantage of for your individual marketing campaigns.

Learn from marketers who had previous success

Storytelling is a very popular genre on TikTok that doesn’t appear to be going out of style anytime soon. Besides, who doesn’t enjoy listening to a funny story? There have been several brands in the past who have had success with this format. Why not tell an interesting story that happened in your establishment? Perhaps share footage of an office birthday party or tell a story about that road trip you and the co-founder of your business went on that will knock anyone’s socks off. People go on social media in their free time purely for entertainment purposes, so even if you are marketing, you don’t have to make it seem like your viewer is watching any boring old advertisement. Make it relatable and enjoyable for your audience to watch so they are more likely to share it with their friends.

You can also film yourself and your crew working on a project for your business. For example, if you are a restaurant and you guys are getting a brand new mural painted on one of the walls, film it! People absolutely love to watch others do creative activities from start to finish. You can also take this opportunity to talk about any other new things going on at your store. For example, Chipotle’s official TikTok page features recipe “hacks” that guests may be interested in trying out the next time they stop by one of the chains. Although they were already an established restaurant prior to TikTok’s existence, this is all a game of exposure, and in order to win it, you’ll need to use all the resources available to you out there, no matter how small or big your brand currently is. There’s simply no such thing as too much exposure.

Get TikTok Pro

If you feel that you have adequate traction on TikTok so far and want to upgrade your visibility even further, you may want to consider getting TikTok Pro. With this noteworthy tool, you can track weekly or monthly demographics for your videos. This will include the gender, age group, and geographic location of users who are viewing your content. Best of all, it’s completely free!

Final Thoughts

You may view TikTok in one of two ways: as a new platform with enormous potential to help sell your business, or as one that is too new and unreliable compared to more veteran websites such as Facebook and Instagram. We encourage you to be active on as many platforms as virtually (no pun intended, we promise!) to promote your brand and optimize its online presence. However, it is up to you to decide which sites work best for you and your business. The good news is because all these platforms are free, you won’t have to worry about facing financial ruin if you decide a particular platform isn’t right for you.

While social media is free for anyone to use, in order to create a successful Internet presence, you will have to devote some of your budget to this such as ad analytics. Here at Drive Traffic Media, we offer solutions to any problems and confusion you may have about this process. Go ahead and give us a call today (949) 800-6990 or email us at info@drivetrafficmedia.com for a free quote for social media and Los Angeles SEO online marketing that really works.