As a business owner, you might know the unique benefits of using TikTok for business over personal account. With TikTok business accounts, sellers can access advanced analytics, advertising opportunities, eCommerce integrations, and professional branding features. That’s why learning how to use a TikTok business account is more helpful than ever.
In this guide, we will detail 6 steps to set up TikTok for your business account from scratch, a quick comparison of TikTok for business and personal accounts, plus tips for TikTok sellers can easily go viral and drive more sales.
Let’s explore thoroughly now!
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What is the Benefit of a TikTok Business Account
Before exploring how to use TikTok for business, it is vital to understand why you should do that.
As you know, TikTok has revolutionized the social media landscape with its short-form video content and user-friendly interface. While initially popular among Gen Z users, TikTok has gained significant traction among businesses as an effective marketing platform. Below are the main reasons why businesses use TikTok so much:
- Get access to a massive customer database: With over 2 billion TikTok users worldwide, this platform owns a significant user database. This is an excellent answer to how to use TikTok for small business to reach large audiences and diversity.
- Acquire high engagement rates: TikTok users are highly engaged compared to most other social networks. They spend an average of 55.8 minutes per day on TikTok. This engagement level allows businesses to contact their target audience and build brand awareness.
- Join a trendsetting platform: TikTok is known for setting trends and viral challenges. Jumping on these rages can significantly boost your brand’s visibility. This is also how you can create buzz around your products or services.
- Offers huge Influencer marketing opportunities: TikTok has many influencers who have amassed large followings. This kind of marketing on TikTok has proven highly effective, with many campaigns going viral and generating massive brand exposure. Thus, collaborating with TikTok influencers can help businesses gain more reach and connect to other potential buyers.
TikTok Business vs Personal Account: Pros and Cons Comparison
Both account types come with unique features and benefits. A comprehensive understanding of their respective advantages and disadvantages empowers you to make more informed and strategic decisions.
Let’s dive in!
TikTok for business
For the question “Is TikTok good for business?” TikTok released a business account type, which is specifically designed for companies and brands that want to use it as a marketing tool. By upgrading to a business account, you will have access to a variety of features and tools. Before creating TikTok business account, both pros and cons need to be considered.
Let’s crack on it!
Pros
- Allow users to get access to more advanced analytics, creative, and publishing tools such as BusinessSuite and Creative Hub, etc. These tools provide sellers access to comprehensive analytics and insights, enabling you to track content performance, audience demographics, LIVE engagement in Business Suite, and more. In addition, TikTok supports finding content inspiration and industry trends in Business Suite, scheduling posts up to 10 days in advance, and accessing the commercial music library.
- Be able to feature a clickable link in their bio, driving traffic to websites, landing pages, or even a TikTok Shop for direct product sales.
- Access TikTok Ads Manager to create and manage targeted ad campaigns. Available formats include in-feed ads, sponsored hashtags, engagement ads, and shopping ads, which enhance visibility and user engagement. This helps you expand your video content’s reach, gain more followers, and increase sales.
- Acquire TikTok’s Commercial Music Library, offering over a million pre-cleared songs and sounds for commercial use. This ensures compliance with copyright laws while leveraging trending audio.
Cons
- Limit access to trending sounds only using the Commercial Music Library. TikTok do not have full access to TikTok’s entire music library, limiting participation in some trending music. It might be a big disadvantage if you are usually using trending music for your TikTok videos. Also, the inability to use trending sounds may lead to reduce your video views.
- Can’t access monetization programs like the Creator Fund or Creator Next, limiting opportunities to earn directly from content creation.
- Unable to use non-commercial audio for features like stitching or duetting, which can restrict participation in popular content trends
TikTok personal account
Personal Accounts are used by most people on TikTok. This is the right option for individuals who don’t have businesses or brands to promote. Here are some pros and cons of using TikTok personal accounts.
Pros
- Personal accounts have unrestricted access to TikTok’s full library of sounds and music, allowing sellers to participate in all audio trends without copyright concerns. On TikTok, videos using trending music were allocated preferentially. So, music is one of the big factors in going viral on this platform.
- Personal accounts offer the flexibility to set profiles to private, providing more control over who can view your content and your profiles.
- Personal accounts can join the Creator Next Program and access monetization features such as the Creator Fund, Video Gifts, Live Gifts, and Tips.
Cons
- Personal accounts offer only basic analytics, limiting the depth of insights compared to business accounts. Additionally, data cannot be downloaded, and in-app viewing is restricted to the last 60 days.
- Personal accounts are less equipped for direct sales and eCommerce activities. They require at least 1,000 followers to add a clickable link in the bio and lack features like TikTok Shop setup.
- Messaging capabilities are restricted to friends or mutual followers, which can hinder communication with a broader audience or potential customers.
- Personal accounts cannot integrate with third-party social media management platforms, limiting the ability to streamline content scheduling and performance tracking.
How To Use TikTok For Business?
The process of how to use TikTok for business includes six steps, including:
- Step 1: Create a TikTok Business Account
- Step 2: Prepare a detailed TikTok strategy
- Step 3: Create viral content
- Step 4: Optimize your TikTok post
- Step 5: Measure performance on TikTok analytics
- Step 6: Get more views using TikTok ads
Now, let us explore in detail each step in the process of how to use TikTok for business:
Step 1: Create a TikTok Business Account
Follow these simple steps if you don’t know how to set up a TikTok business account:
- Download and open the TikTok app on your device.
- If you don’t have a TikTok account, you can establish a new personal account by following the instructions displayed on the TikTok signup screen. You can utilize your email address or log in through your Google, Twitter, or Facebook account.
- Once you have created a personal account, tap on the profile icon at the bottom right corner of the screen.
- Tap on the menu icon (three horizontal lines) at the top right corner of the screen and choose Settings and Privacy.
- Under Settings and Privacy, tap on Account.
- In the Account settings, tap on Switch to Business Account to convert personal account into a TikTok Business Account.
- Now, use TikTok for business login.
Step 2: Prepare a detailed TikTok strategy
Learning how to use TikTok for business requires a strategic approach. But before jumping into creating content, you need to prepare a good foundation to make win strategies. From discovering who you’re trying to reach and where they hang out on TikTok to defining clear objectives for your TikTok, here are some first moves that will help you quickly go viral and have more traffic from TikTok.
Let’s crack on!
Understand your target audience and the TikTok community
Once you complete how to create a TikTok business account, the next step in how to use TikTok for business processes is to comprehensively target your target audience on this platform. But how is that? Here are useful tips to help you understand who your target audience is and how they behave:
- Know the main audience of TikTok: According to Statista, the 18-34 age group dominates TikTok, making up an estimated 65-70% of the platform’s users in 2024. However, the share of users aged 35 and above is expected to gradually increase as TikTok continues to diversify its content and features. This helps you create more relevant and engaging content for your customers.
- Spend time on the TikTok platform: By actively using TikTok and exploring the content, you can gain insights into the interests, preferences, and behaviors of the TikTok community. While surfing TikTok, you should take note of the types of videos that are popular, the trends that are emerging, and the hashtags that are frequently used. This will help you easily brainstorm and create ideas that hit customer insights later
- Discover page: The Discover page on TikTok provides a curated content selection based on categories and interests. You can explore different categories and hashtags related to your target audience to understand their preferences and the content they engage with.
- Research relevant hashtags and subcultures: It would be better to use the search bar on TikTok to find hashtags related to your industry, niche, or target audience. For example, if you operate a cosmetics store, #makeuptutorial, #beauty, should be your hashtags. By exploring these hashtags, you can discover subcultures and communities within TikTok that align with your target audience’s interests.
Understand how the TikTok algorithm works and goes viral
After understanding your audience on TikTok, let’s find out how this platform works. TikTok’s proprietary algorithm works by analyzing thousands of signals to determine the most engaging and relevant content for each user’s “For You” feed. Here are some key factors:
- #1. User interactions: The algorithm tracks likes, shares, comments, and other interactions to understand content preferences. It also looks at which accounts you follow and which videos you watch to the end.
- #2. Video information: Details like captions, hashtags, sounds, and effects help the algorithm categorize and recommend videos. Videos with high-quality visuals, engaging content, and strong production value tend to perform better.
- #3. Device and account settings: The algorithm considers your location, language, and other device/account settings to personalize your feed. It also factors in when you’re most active on the app to recommend content at optimal times.
To figure out how to use TikTok for business, starting with how the TikTok algorithm works and what makes content go viral is crucial for businesses looking to succeed on the platform.
Do competitor research
If your competitors are already on TikTok, they can be a goldmine insight. Analyzing them will help you have an overview of content that has high – engagement with your target audience. Here are some questions that you should answer when analyzing your competitors:
- Content analysis: What types of videos are they posting? Are they focusing on trends, product demos, behind-the-scenes, or user-generated content? How does their content align with their brand identity?
- Audience engagement: How do they interact with their followers? Do they respond to comments promptly? Are they creating a sense of community? High engagement rates indicate a strong connection with their audience.
- Platform features: Which TikTok features are they utilizing effectively? Are they using duets, stitches, or trending sounds to their advantage?
- Timing and frequency: When do they post their content? How often do they post? Identifying their posting patterns can help you optimize your content schedule.
Sets your goals
Once you clearly understand your target audience and your competitors in particular, as well as the TikTok community in general, setting your goal is the next step in how to use TikTok for business. To set the most reasonable goals, you need to consider the following factors:
- Define your objectives: You have to start by identifying what you want to achieve with your TikTok marketing efforts. Your goals could include increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, boosting sales, or engaging with your target audience. Here is what we recommend:
- Your objective should be formulated according to the SMART formula. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Let us give you an example of a SMART goal as follows: “Our objective is to get 50,000 traffic for our shop from our TikTok account in 2 months. We will accomplish this goal by following how to use TikTok for the business guide.”
- You should set only a few goals. This avoids overloading you and making it possible to achieve good results for your purposes. It should have less than three goals at best.
- Allocate your resources: Determining the resources you are willing to invest in your TikTok marketing strategy is essential. Why? This will help keep the TikTok campaign for your business from running out of capital or producing lower-quality content. In short, maintain a stable TikTok channel. Resources mentioned here may include budget, time, and personnel.
Make your content plan
On the journey of discovering how to start a TikTok business, you need to realize that even if you excel at making content plans to promote your brand on other platforms like Instagram or Facebook, TikTok is different. It is a unique dynamic, and unpredictable platform that demands a cohesive content strategy.
Making a content plan ensures you don’t miss important dates and allows you enough time for creative production. In this step, you can start with:
- Choosing a format to organize your content plan. A spreadsheet, calendar tool, or project management software can work well.
- Once you’ve selected a format, start scheduling your content. Determine when and where you’ll publish each piece, whether it’s a blog post, social media update, or email newsletter. It was presented in video or image format. Which hashtag will you use when posting this video?
- Finally, consider organizing your content around specific themes or topics, known as content pillars to converse your viewers to customers.
If you want to boost your follower count and elevate brand awareness. This guide covers small TikTok ideas to go viral
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Step 3: Create viral content
Now, we move to the core step in how to use TikTok for business: generating content. There is no general formula for creating compelling content for business on TikTok. However, there are some things you should follow, at least to ensure that your content has a chance to reach your audience, including:
- Follow TikTok trends: You ought to stay up-to-date with the latest TikTok trends and challenges. Incorporate popular trends into your content to increase its visibility and reach. Nevertheless, verifying that the trends match your brand and remain pertinent to your intended audience is vital.
- Tell a story: Storytelling never seems out of style in the marketing industry. And when you market for business on TikTok, this technique is still very effective in captivating your audience. An engaging narrative has the potential to foster an emotional bond with your audience and enhance the memorability of your content.
- Keep it short and snappy: Keep in mind that TikTok is a short video platform. Therefore, although TikTok videos have a maximum duration of 60 seconds, shorter videos tend to perform better. We suggest you grab viewers’ attention within the first few seconds with a hook and deliver your message concisely.
- Use captions and text: Due to the typically brief content on TikTok, it can occasionally challenge the audience to grasp your content completely. Using clear and concise text or captions can complement your visuals and enhance the viewer’s understanding of your content.
- Leverage music and sound effects: Music and sound are crucial in creating moving visual content, including TikTok videos. Music and sound can set the mood, evoke emotions, and make your videos more enjoyable. Using trending sounds is also a way to push videos to trend.
Step 4: Optimize your TikTok post
Like other platforms, for content to reach the largest audience for TikTok business, SEO is a must. So, the next step in how to use TikTok for business is profoundly understanding and applying TikTok SEO. So, how to master TikTok SEO? Following these steps:
- Research keywords: You can start by researching keywords relevant to your content and target audience. You can use the TikTok Keyword Insights tool to discover top search terms in your niche. Additionally, you can type in a search term on TikTok and see what comes up in the predictive text to get keyword ideas.
- Optimize video content: TikTok is a visual platform, so optimizing your video content is crucial. Here are some optimization tips you can learn:
- Add hashtags: Including relevant hashtags in your video captions to improve discoverability would be better. It could be hashtags about your brand, your product or any trending one.s
- Use captivating thumbnails: We suggest you choose an eye-catching thumbnail that entices users to click on your video.
- Include relevant keywords: You have to incorporate relevant keywords that you have searched on your video captions and descriptions to improve search visibility.
Step 5: Measure performance on TikTok analytics
After spending a considerable amount of time on TikTok, it becomes crucial to assess your progress objectively as a TikTok business manager. That’s why exploring TikTok Analytics and optimizing your TikTok channel become the close to final step in how to use TikTok for business. It would help if you analyzed your reach and engagement metrics. Doing so lets you understand who is watching and following your content.
Besides, analytics data eliminate the need for guesswork in content strategy by providing concrete evidence of what is effective and what is not. Besides these 4 most basic metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and followers. Here are most main metrics to track on TikTok that every TikTok creator needs to track:
- Profile views: The number of times your TikTok profile has been viewed
- Engagement rate: The ratio of engagement actions (likes, comments, shares) to video views
- Average watch time: The average length of time people watched your videos
- Watch full video: The percentage of viewers who watch your videos all the way through, indicating content quality.
Step 6: Get more views using TikTok ads
Similar to TikTok Shop, TikTok advertising is also an optional step in how to use TikTok for your business. However, it’s worth a try as a way to reach a larger audience in less time. TikTok offers a variety of advertising selections for businesses looking to promote their products that can mention:
- In-feed ads: In-feed ads are native ads appearing in users’ TikTok feeds as they surf the app. They may be up to 60 seconds long and involve features like clickable links and call-to-action buttons. In-feed ads are a great way to reach a wide audience on TikTok.
- TopView Ads: TopView ads are full-screen video ads that appear when users first open the TikTok app. They can also be up to 60 seconds long and are an obvious and impactful advertising option on TikTok.
- Branded takeover: Branded takeover ads are similar to TopView ads but are limited to one advertiser per day. Full-screen ads appear when users first open the TikTok app and can include images, videos, and links.
- In-app purchases: TikTok also offers in-app purchases as an advertising option. This lets users make purchases directly within the app, providing an opportunity for businesses to sell their products or services to TikTok users.
4 All-Time Best Tips to Easy Go Viral on TikTok
We keep on going on the journey of how to use TikTok for business by keeping in mind 5 tips for creating viral TikTok content. From leveraging the latest trends to interacting with your followers, we’ll show you how to maximize your TikTok presence and increase your chances of going viral.
Let’s get into it now!
#1. Encourage user-generated content – UCG
User-generated content (UGC) on TikTok refers to videos, challenges, and other creative content created by regular TikTok users that feature a specific brand, product, or service.
UGC helps brands build trust and credibility, increase engagement, and get higher conversion rates. When a brand posts UGC on TikTok, it performs 22% better than branded content, 32% higher than Facebook ads, and 46% higher than conventional ads.
The most effective ads leverage authentic UGC that showcases genuine product interactions, rather than overt sales tactics. Gen Z consumers on TikTok are highly discerning and can easily detect inauthenticity, which is an immediate barrier to success on the platform.
Todd Piechowski, VP of Growth at Envision Horizons
After knowing several benefits of UGC, you might want to take advantage of using these campaigns to leverage your brand performance. Here are some types of TikTok UGC campaigns that you can create:
- Hashtag challenges that encourage users to participate in creative video responses. Brands create unique hashtags and encourage users to create and share content. This type of ad can generate high levels of engagement and user-generated content.
- Branded effects allow brands to create custom filters, stickers, and augmented reality (AR) effects that users can apply to their videos. This type of ad can help increase brand awareness and engagement on TikTok.
- Contests and giveaways that require users to create UGC to participate, incentivizing content creation and boosting engagement.
#2. Identify profitable niches
To reduce competition, differentiate your content and brand from the vast sea of generic TikTok videos, and have higher earning potential, you should identify profitable niches to create content on TikTok. Here are several niches that can be particularly profitable and successful on TikTok helping you get a clearer answer to the question of how to use TikTok for business:
- Comedy: Funny, humorous content tends to perform well on TikTok. This could include comedy sketches, relatable memes, or entertaining skits.
- Motivation: Uplifting, inspirational, and motivational content resonates with many TikTok users. This could include self-help tips, positive affirmations, or stories of personal growth.
- Challenge: When you invite your audience to create their video based on performing a specific task with #hashtag such as using a filter, performing a dance, etc.
- Review: Real-life stories and anecdotes from law enforcement professionals seem to captivate TikTok audiences.
#3. Post your content consistently and regularly
Consistency is key on TikTok. Posting content frequently and regularly helps keep your audience engaged and increases the likelihood of your videos appearing in their feeds. We encourage you to experiment with different types of content that not only keeps your feed interesting but also helps you maintain a consistent post schedule.
Also, posting when your audience is most active can significantly boost your reach. To find out when your followers are online, check the ‘Follower Activity’ report under Creator Center → Analytics → Follower tab. This report highlights peak activity times from the past week. Or you can check this best time to post on the TikTok detail guide.
#4. Interact with your followers constantly
It’s essential to invest time in reading, reacting, and responding to comments on your TikTok business videos. This practice demonstrates that you value your audience’s feedback, encouraging ongoing engagement. Additionally, commenting on other channels’ videos can boost your presence on TikTok.
In addition, you can go live to build stronger relationships with your followers. Hosting live streams on your TikTok for business account allows you to connect with your audience more personally and appear regularly in the audience’s mind. During these sessions, you can answer questions, discuss specific topics, and build rapport with your viewers. Live streams also provide an opportunity to sell your products or offer special deals to your audience.
According to Statista’s report in March 2024, 28 percent of content creators announced making between According to Statista’s March 2024 report, 28% of content creators earned between $25 and $199 annually. About 22% made $1,000 or more from live content, while roughly a quarter earned less than $25.
How To Use TikTok For Business: FAQs
Yes is the final answer to the question, “Is TikTok for business free.” When you switch to a TikTok Business Account, you gain access to a suite of features that can help you create content and manage your account. These features include analytics to review detailed metrics about your account’s growth, the ability to display your email address directly on your TikTok profile, the option to share a direct link to your website on your profile, a post scheduler to schedule TikTok posts in advance, and access to a commercial music library with over 100,000 songs free of copyright fees. Yes, TikTok can benefit businesses, such as: To know how to use tiktok for business marketing, you can follow these steps: Yes, you can use your personal TikTok account for your business. However, it is recommended to create a separate business account to maintain a clear distinction between personal and professional content and to access additional features and analytics specifically designed for businesses. Yes, you can switch between a TikTok Business Account and a Personal Account at any time.
TikTok advises against switching back and forth from a Business to a Personal account. So, if you would like to promote your business on TikTok but also post organic personal content, we recommend you do these two activities in separate accounts.
Get Success with Your TikTok For Business Today!
Overall, how to use TikTok for business is a relatively long process and requires a lot of investment in time and effort. However, this investment will likely bring positive results to your business performance. Furthermore, our how to use TikTok for business is very detailed, your job is just to read carefully and follow each step. If you want to discover more interesting online business knowledge, follow our blog and join our Facebook community.
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