Business

Source: Dana Galo l Industries

TikTok is responsible for influencing almost every single industry, especially in the business world. Small businesses in particular have benefited significantly from the app. Once a TikTok user posts a video about a small business with a compelling remark about that business, viewers do their part to support it. Recommendations are a huge deal on TikTok and have become the go-to app for recommendations for nearly any industry, whether restaurants, stores… you name it. Most of the time, these recommendations come from the consumers, rather than businesses or the brand themselves, which seems to carry even more weight. Brands have grown tremendously from exposure on the app. In fact, there are plenty of accounts all over the world that exclusively call out their favorite small businesses. If you pull up TikTok and search the name of your city with the word ‘restaurants’ (ex: Philly Restaurants), you will be exposed to videos with millions of views and comments listing the best places to eat around the city. People love to show off local shops and businesses in their areas, which works to get them views on their video and more interest in the business they showcase.

Source: Dana Galo l Statistics from Hootsuite

Forbes contributor Marcia Layton Turner wrote the article “Using TikTok To Build Your Business” as a way to inform readers of the often overlooked benefits that the app provides to businesses. She details the single-most useful aspect of the app to drive business, stating “where TikTok shines is in generating brand awareness and engagement. Users that can combine entertaining or informative content in a 15 or 60 second video clip have the potential to see almost immediate results.” These videos cost no money at all to create, yet can generate lots of money. There are even in-app editing features and effects, so it literally can’t get any easier. For businesses that don’t have huge budgets to spend on advertising or marketing, TikTok works really well to level the playing field. The unique algorithm of TikTok is what allows small businesses to thrive on the app, unlike on any other platform. The chances of a video becoming viral are much greater and are not dependent on the business’s amount of followers, Rather, their success depends on the quality of the content and how they are received by viewers. If a business is just getting started and only has a handful of followers, TikTok drives traffic to their videos anyway. Another huge effect is the way that the app calculates users’ interests and puts specific videos onto their For You Pages. This makes it so that a business’s video falls into the right feeds - people who are most interested in that specific subject. Lastly, the success of an individual’s TikTok video has sparked an entrepreneurial spirit within creators to turn their hobbies or passions into actual businesses, based on the feedback they receive from the TikTok community.