AuthorAmy Van Schalkwyk
LinkedIn
Digital PR is a constantly evolving industry, and staying ahead of the curve is essential to its success. That’s why it’s important to consider established platforms like TikTok as part of your Digital PR strategy.
As its popularity continues to grow, with over 1.4 billion active users worldwide, Digital PR experts are recognising TikTok’s potential as a powerful tool for PR tactics, from building backlinks to establishing clients as experts in specific industries.
In this blog post, we'll explore why TikTok should be part of your Digital PR strategy and how you can leverage it to boost your brand's visibility, create engaging and unique Digital PR campaigns and connect with younger audiences.
Unleashing the Power of TikTok Trends and Hashtags for Digital PR
If you work in Digital PR, you’ll be highly familiar with the growing number of headlines about TikTok. From debunking TikTok health claims to recreating TikTok home design trends, there’s no denying that journalists love stories about the platform to engage their readers.
So, how can we leverage trending topics to create content that promotes our client’s brands or messages, drives traffic, and builds all-important backlinks to their websites?
Find trends and hashtags relevant to your client’s niche.
The best way to make TikTok work for your clients' stories and campaigns is to actively use TikTok and engage with content relevant to your client’s niche using the ‘Discover’ tab. Look for hashtags, communities and products and engage with them by liking and commenting. The TikTok algorithm will work its magic almost instantly, and you’ll start to see more content centred around specific trends, sectors and products, helping you spot the right content and trends for your clients quickly.
Use TikTok trends and top products.
Another great tool is TikTok Trends. If you don’t like the idea of tailoring your ‘For You Page’ to your client’s niche, you can also use TikTok Trends and Top Products. The TikTok Trends tool shows trends based on different industries, the most searched keywords, how many views a hashtag has had over a period of time, and the number of videos created. You can also use the search bar to find a keyword or hashtag in your client’s niche.
Take this one step further by clicking on the ‘analytics’ of your keyword to see the interest over time, related searches and where in the world it’s popular.
TikTok Products give you great insight into trending products based on country and industry over a selected period of time. When you click on the product, you can find data on audience, popularity, related hashtags, related videos and the age range of people viewing that product.
Target popular sounds.
Don’t forget about trending sounds. They’re typically very up-to-date when it comes to popular culture, TV shows and films. To find TikTok sounds to spark inspiration for campaigns and stories, type ‘trend alert’ in the ‘Discover’ tab to find videos specifically about sounds that are going to be trending either currently or in the future. You can filter the dates to show videos in the past day, week or month that use the hashtag or mention of trend alert. For example, the sound ‘something you regret buying, having or using’ could be a great way for fashion clients to index the trend pieces you should or shouldn’t invest in based on creator videos and the items most frequently mentioned.
Measure the impact of TikTok trends.
The first step to measuring the impact of TikTok trends is to use Google Trends to see how often people are searching for a particular topic, trend or product and whether that search volume has increased or decreased. Using Google Trends will help you determine whether there’s an actual increase in interest and real-world impact around a particular trend. Bolstering your TikTok trends and news with Google Trends data will help to strengthen the validity of using TikTok trends in your press releases and pitches to journalists.
You can also download the Glimpse plugin for Google Trends and change the ‘channel’ to TikTok. Glimpse will help you find growing trends, search interest for a specific topic or keyword, other similar topics people are searching for, related trending queries, and which channels or platforms your keyword or trend appears most.
Finding the Right Angle: Crafting Effective Digital PR Campaigns Using TikTok
Once you’ve identified trending TikTok topics, themes, and videos, how do you convert them into engaging news stories that the press will love and put your client at the heart of the conversation?
The most popular X on TikTok campaigns.
Journalists love stories ranking the most popular X on TikTok. To do this, identify a topic or theme you want to create an index on. The key is choosing a topic relevant to your brand or client.
Next, research the data using TikTok analytics and Google Trends and look for any patterns and trends. You can then create an index that ranks the top performers, whether that be by views, hashtags, creators or likes.
Expert advice and debunking.
One of the best ways to maximise TikTok in Digital PR is to utilise your client’s knowledge about a particular topic and their in-house experts. Journalists value reliable, expert advice from accredited individuals, so offering to connect journalists with these experts or sharing ready-to-use quotes is an excellent tactic for building backlinks to your client's websites and boosting keyword rankings for relevant search terms.
For example, you may have a homeware client who can comment on TikTok bed-making hacks or offer advice on getting a good night’s sleep in a heatwave. Perhaps health editors want to know whether a TikTok nutritional trend is safe – do you have an expert who can support or debunk the claim? Or maybe you have an interior expert who can share tips on how to recreate the Regencycore design trend on a budget.
In-house data and studies.
As well as expert advice, journalists are always looking out for new, exclusive, surprising data to back their stories, especially if this is connected to a trending story. For example, if the trending topic is about the popularity of plant-based recipes on TikTok, can your food client provide internal sales data on the most popular plant-based recipes amongst their customers? Or perhaps your fitness client surveyed women’s attitudes and opinions towards working out in the gym and can share unique insights about ‘gymtimidation’.
Offering journalists exclusive access to your client’s data that’s not available elsewhere will help you build strong relationships with your target media, place your client at the centre of the conversation on trending stories, and increase the likelihood of journalists linking to your client in their articles.
Tutorials.
Do your clients have an in-house expert who can advise on participating in a TikTok trend? Maybe you have a beauty client with insight on the dos and don'ts of scalp oiling, or perhaps you have a fitness client who knows exactly how to master the latest dance trend. This is a great opportunity to get your client’s voice at the heart of a topic or trend by sharing expert advice and tips about how to partake in a trending tutorial, any health or safety warnings associated with it and insights into why the tutorial is popular with different groups of people and industries.
Commenting on TikTok business news.
Your Digital PR tactics don’t always have to lean on TikTok videos and trends. Due to its rapid growth and massive influence over buying habits and product discovery, the media constantly covers stories about the platform. However, despite its widespread usage worldwide, many governments and institutions are imposing bans on the app.
These growing business news stories are a great opportunity for your clients' founders and CEOs to offer their perspectives. Perhaps you have a workplace solutions client who can share why they believe TikTok should or shouldn’t be removed from work devices, or maybe you have a recruitment client who can shed some light on how TikTok impacts the performance of at-home workers.
Create product buzz.
Gifting products to key creators with a large, engaged audience helps your client tap into their followers and increase the exposure of a product. When done well, it’s a highly effective tactic to generate interest in your brand's offering.
Once specific hashtags about the product start to gain traction and reach a certain number of views, Digital PRs can take advantage of the trend and reach out to journalists and key media with headlines like ‘TikTok users are loving this X’ or ‘[client] just launched X and it’s already going viral on TikTok’.
By providing commentary from in-house experts on why the hashtag or product is so popular with Gen Z and TikTok users, brands can position themselves as thought-leaders in their industry and increase their visibility.
As the trend continues to grow on TikTok and in the media, relevant links help to increase rankings for the keyword hashtags, meaning anyone searching for that hashtag or product will be directed towards your client's website through organic search. This is an incredibly powerful way to attract new customers and increase the rate of new customers visiting your client's websites by combining influencer gifting, Digital PR, and SEO tactics to create an integrated approach that delivers real results.
What you need to remember
Move quickly.
Trends on social media, particularly on TikTok, can be unpredictable. Their popularity is often short-lived and can change very quickly. Today’s trend could be gone tomorrow, so if you want to use them in your press releases and pitches, be sure to move quickly to ensure your client can own the narrative before their competitors.
Make sure you have a strong pitch.
To ensure your pitches perform well, provide journalists with all the information they need and more! It's essential to have a strong angle that grabs the reader's attention, includes compelling statistics or data, and, most importantly, ensures that your client's perspective adds value to the narrative.
Use an integrated approach with SEO.
Gaining backlinks to your client’s website from established and relevant news sites is great for boosting your client's authority and visibility, but to really maximise your TikTok strategy, make sure your tactics are integrated with your SEO team. Ensure your press releases and pitches are optimised with relevant non-brand keywords to boost your client's organic rankings in Google. This ultimately will lead to better success and ROI for all your campaigns and pitches!
Overall, by leveraging TikTok trends, hashtags, and top products, Digital PR experts can create content that promotes their clients' brands, drives traffic, and builds valuable coverage and backlinks to their websites. However, remember it’s crucial to move quickly, have a strong pitch, and integrate Digital PR tactics with SEO to achieve maximum success.
