How to Leverage TikTok Micro-Influencers for Your Small Business
If you’re a small or medium business, you know the value of using social media to elevate your brand. Not only is social media a crucial platform for growing brand awareness, but it has also proven to be a commercial opportunity to boost sales.
Even though, in social terms, TikTok is still in its infancy, it’s currently growing as an important resource for many businesses. In fact, it’s the fastest growing social media site, with an estimated 800 million active users. If you are looking to stay ahead of the trend and reach new audiences, TikTok is the platform to embrace.
So how can you make the most of TikTok to reach out to both new and existing audiences? Working with micro-influencers (also known as the ‘nano’) is a great way to build your brand on the platform. They could have anywhere from 5,000 to 100,000 followers. They tend to have very targeted audiences.
Here’s everything you need to know about utilizing micro-influencers to grow your brand on TikTok as a small business owner.
Content is King
As with all things social, content is the greatest asset in your arsenal. Engaging social media content is all about finding new and creative ways to keep up a dialogue with your followers. Creating great videos for your TikTok channel is one way of doing this. Another is getting others to do it for you, like influencers and fans. After all, growing your reach should be an important part of your social media marketing strategy.
Successful social media marketing is dependent on one important factor: using the right content the right way to reach the right audience.
The influence of influencers
In simple terms, influencers are people or entities with a sizeable following that are used by marketers to promote products and services. They yield great influence over their followers, impacting on their buying behaviour and otherwise. In TikTok terms, this can be new emerging talent in entertainment, vlogger-style personalities and more. Being a music-led platform, it does, however, tend to lend itself to more of a youthful audience.
Using influencers is a well-established tool on Instagram and Facebook, paving the way for the growth of TikTok influencers.
Micro or macro?
If you’re thinking of joining the TikTok party, you’ll need to think about what sort of influencer to approach for your brand.
Macro-influencers were the first breed of social media ambassadors. These influencers have hundreds of thousands, or even millions of fans across the world.
The micro-influencer in contrast, has a much smaller following. As mentioned above, they could have between 5,000 to 100,000 followers. The difference, however, is that they tend to have a much more niche audience.
Why is this important? In the age of tailored and personal communications, brands are increasingly trying to take a more human approach to marketing, rather than to try and appeal to the anonymous masses.
Some influencer examples
Let’s take a look at some TikTok micro-influencers on the rise. First is Giselle Ugarte (@mediabridgegiselle). She currently has 73.7k followers and creates impressive content in the niche of marketing and marketing strategy.
Yoga Before Coffee is another micro-influencer to watch out for. Specializing in yoga videos, she has a strong fanbase of 82.2k followers and is dominating that niche.
In contrast, mainstream TikTok Influencers can have quite a huge following.
Take influencer Savannah LaBrant for instance. With a whopping 21.3 million followers on TikTok, she’s one of the big names in parent blogging. Interestingly, her TikTok channel has double the followers of her YouTube channel, proving the power of the platform.
Over the waters to India, another mass-influencer is comedic actress Sameeksha Sud. The star has accumulated over 24.2 million fans on her page, enlightening them with plenty of fun sketches.
These are just a snapshot of some of the many thousands of influencers that make up the platform.
Five good reasons to start working with micro-influencers
If you’re a business looking to grow followers or increase brand awareness on TikTok, a micro-influencer can be a great investment. In some cases, collaborating with one may even convert to sales.
Still unconvinced? Here are 5 good reasons to opt for a TikTok micro-influencer:
1. Trust and transparency
Social platforms have required greater transparency for brand collaborations over the years. Today you’re expected to use #Ad and #Spon to be more upfront from the get-go.
One of the issues with using mainstream influencers is that some of the trust that they used to have is gone. Some of the big names have been accused of using their social media influence to make money, without any regard to followers. Many have also been called out for buying fake followers.
Micro-influencers on the other hand, don’t have the same reputation. They are considered to be more trustworthy, engaged and transparent with their followers. And because they remain widely undiscovered, they also have the ability to respond and interact with their followers – which is a very important trait in influencer marketing.
2. TikTok is a growing platform for businesses
With TikTok being relatively new, you may find you get more for your money. As a growing platform, now is a good time to find ambassadors to work with and build relationships with for the long-haul. Even big brands like Venus have been using it to great effect with influencers like Victoria Bachlet (3.4 million fans).
3. TikTok wants you!
TikTok has just dropped a new and exciting feature – TikTok for Business. This makes it easier than ever to get your brand message out there and work with influencers on great content. The best part? You’ll be able to monitor your collaborated content more easily.
4. Target your audience
The most compelling reason to use a TikTok micro-influencer is because of how targeted they are. While a macro-influencer can reach more people, it’s likely that the micro-influencer will reach more of the right users. And if you want to convert your content into sales, this is key.
There’s much science to back up the point that engagement is far more important than likes, so try and look for influencers with an engaged audience.
Here’s a great example of a smaller brand campaign, involving female gamer Candice, partnering with Run Around to her modest 25k fanbase. It’s interesting to note that it received 130k likes:
5. Save money
As you’d expect, you’ll pay a lot less for working with a micro-influencer than you would have with a mainstream one. To give you some idea, companies have been known to pay anywhere from $200 to $20,000 for a branded video.
Quite often, TikTokers are given free rein to create whatever they want, as long as they mention the brand and #ad or #spon. Take for instance Maud who was used by Ritual Cosmetics to showcase their product. With 436k followers, it received over 25k likes.
How and where to find influencers?
So, we’ve converted you to TikTok! Now what?
There isn’t a set menu of influencers to pick and choose from, meaning that you’ll need to do some research. A good place to start is with competitor brands, or those that align with your brand values. See who they are using and take note. If you can’t afford said influencer, look for others that follow them and are of lesser fame.
You can also use online search tools like Upfluence that do the hard work for you.
Conclusion
TikTok is a growing platform for small businesses. Now is a good time to get in early and find some great micro-influencers to collaborate with. A wise choice for your budget and good for your reputation, choose the right brand ambassador and you’ll see your audience grow.
