How to Get Your Small Business Featured on TikTok’s For You Page
By: Cori Widen, Product Marketing Lead at Boosted by Lightricks
The goal of every content creator on TikTok is to have their videos featured on the For You Page (FYP). As a small business owner who understands that TikTok is an essential marketing tool in 2020 and is investing time in the platform, how can you get your content featured on the FYP?
We’ve put together a complete guide for you with everything you need to know about getting your videos featured on the FYP.
What is TikTok’s FYP?
The FYP is TikTok’s version of a homefeed and is the first feed someone sees when they open up their TikTok app. The For You Page’s algorithm functions in a similar way to Instagram’s Explore page – users can view an endless stream of trending TikTok videos curated just for them, based on their interests and past videos they’ve engaged with.
The Benefits of TikTok For Businesses
The platform isn’t just for entertaining dance videos – businesses can achieve big business goals if they approach the platform correctly. Here are a few benefits of TikTok for your business:
- Increase brand awareness
- Showcase your brand’s authenticity
- Build trust among the public
- Generate buzz and even PR
- Drive sales & generate leads
- Encourage new website traffic
- Connect with new audiences
- Build loyalty among younger customers
- Give your customers a more raw, real view into your company
- Create quality video content to post on all social platforms
- It’s a ton of fun!
Why Businesses Should Care About Getting Featured on the FYP
Why should your business care about trying to get onto TikTok’s For You Page? It’s simple – getting your video onto the For You Page is the best way to increase views and build a follower base TikTok, which will in turn help you achieve your business goals, like attracting new customers and increasing sales in a cost-effective way.
How Does TikTok’s FYP Work?
The best part of TikTok’s For You Page is how unique it is for each user because TikTok’s algorithm will tailor content specifically to each user’s preferences. The worst part? No one really knows exactly how TikTok’s FYP algorithm works!
So how do you get your business on TikTok’s For You Page if we don’t know exactly how the algorithm works? We’ve watched thousands of videos and have put together a list of 8 key secrets to hack the algorithm and get your business’ TikTok videos trending on the FYP.
8 Tips to Get Your Small Business on the TikTok For You Page
So what can your small business do to make the TikTok algorithm work for you and get one of your videos on the For You Page? Below are 8 actionable tips and theories to help you hack the TikTok algorithm and get your business on the FYP:
1. Post Videos Often – The math is simple on this one – the more TikTok videos you create and post, the more chances you will get to end up on the FYP page. One thing you need to know about TikTok is that things are unpredictable – no one really ever knows which videos will get the most views and ‘go viral,’ so it’s best to post often to increase the odds of getting your TikTok videos onto the For You Page.
2. Create Suspenseful Videos – We’ve noticed a major trend with many of the videos on TikTok’s For You Page…they often have a suspenseful, cliffhanger ending! Try to create TikTok videos that are suspenseful and force the viewer to watch the whole video to see the end result. Why? It’s been theorized that a video is more likely to go viral and get onto many users’ For You Pages if someone watches the entire video from start to finish.
Here’s some inspiration from content creator @ImThatLauren:
3. Engage after posting – This is a good tip for every social media platform – it’s always important to engage with your followers, especially right after you’ve posted. A good rule of thumb is to spend 20-30 minutes after you’ve posted your TikTok video to engage with your followers, new accounts and especially anyone who has commented on your video.
4. Participate in Challenges – A TikTok challenge includes a few key elements: a trending song, your unique spin on the challenge and a hashtag. Watch some of the videos in your FYP to see what challenges and songs are trending then see if your business can recreate a challenge with a unique spin on it. Always be sure to make it your own and follow the community guidelines.
5. Reward Loyal Customers – Are there any customers of yours who are already on TikTok and have already posted about your business? Be sure to engage with them and thank them for their support! A great example of this recently was the viral ‘Ocean Spray Guy’ TikTok video. An Ocean Spray customer’s video went viral (it’s currently at 53.4 million views!) so the company celebrated by gifting him a new truck, full of Cran-Raspberry juice of course.
6. Use Trending Music – Music is key to the TikTok experience and using trending songs will help your business get on the FYP faster. TikTok will show you which songs are trending and if you find a video with a song that you want to use eventually, click on the music title at the bottom of the TikTok to ‘Add to Favorites’ to easily use later on.
7. Include a Few Hashtags – While no one really seems to know exactly how the TikTok algorithm works, we know users can discover videos through hashtags, so it’s a strategy we can’t skip. You might have noticed that people often use a ton of hashtags on Instagram and your first instinct might be to include as many hashtags as possible on TikTok as well.
However, it seems like shorter is better when it comes to TikTok’s FYP. We don’t recommend going above 3 hashtags to help keep your caption simple & clean. And make sure any hashtags you include are relevant and trending – TikTok will show you how many views each hashtag has and indicates FYP trending hashtags with a little fire icon.
Check out our full guide on TikTok hashtags here.
8. Ask For Engagement – Think it sounds desperate to ask people to like your videos? Not when it comes to TikTok! TikTok users have found creative ways to increase views and get onto the For You Page. For example, many trending videos will have captions such as ‘if this gets enough likes, I’ll post a part 2!’ A few other examples include captions like, ‘TikTok do your thing!’ or ‘No one believed in my business idea, prove them wrong by liking this video.’
Here’s a great example of an engagement-building caption from Enlight Videoleap. The next video they posted was a tutorial of how to achieve this effect:
Follow these tips to get your small business featured on the FYP page and get your content the exposure that it deserves! Check out our other TikTok blogs for more insights on how to build your brand on the plarform:
Cori Widen is the Product Marketing Lead at Boosted by Lightricks. She has been leading product marketing campaigns and doing qualitative market research in the tech industry for 10 years.
