TikTok has emerged as one of the best platforms for self-expression, allowing people to post content and opinion based on their own likes and preferences. Furthermore, the app’s algorithm makes it so that contents can be easily grouped and identified through their hashtags.
The environment in this social media platform has made TikTok a hotbed for subcultures, taking these specialized lifestyles that have existed since the earliest days of the internet to the next level. From a marketing perspective, however, tapping into these subsets means connecting with a certain market segment, increasing the odds of successful conversion.
To make sure your brand makes the most out of this growing trend, here are four ways you can benefit from TikTok subcultures:
1. Improve Range and Discoverability
TikTok has more than 1 billion active users, making it an inevitable part of current social media strategies. By aligning your brand with a specific image, you can start looking for the subculture that best represents you. Successfully connecting with a specific segment will provide your brand with increased visibility. Being able to establish your presence extends your range in the market. Furthermore, being authentic about it could even make your brand be associated with the subculture, increasing your discoverability over time.
Lastly, as with all social media platforms, engaging in TikTok carries the chance of your content blowing up and being viral. However, it’s an ongoing process and companies often have to keep their content consistent and timely or else risk falling into oblivion
2. Create a More Personalized Experience
Authenticity is an important aspect of building a brand and TikTok can help you connect better with your target market. If you’ve chosen a specific segment to establish your brand with, watching content will give you a better idea of their needs, preferences, and nuances that can help inform your decisions moving forward. It’s even made easier because materials are generally identified and sorted based on their hashtags.
A good example is when lifestyle brands try to align with the cottagecore trend that’s all the craze among young adults today. In line with the simplicity of a rural lifestyle, brands may offer products or services relevant to their philosophy.
When done correctly, you can tailor your brand toward a more personalized experience that reflects what your target market really likes. The best part of specifically tailoring your products and services toward a subculture is that they repay them in kind. Authentic brands that reflect subcultures are seen as an asset to the culture, helping them stand out and establish themselves better.
3. Gain Cultural Currency
TikTok offers its own take and its own opportunities for making your brand viral. When done correctly, brand campaigns can provide you with cultural currency, which refers to material and immaterial assets that allow an entity increased social mobility. In your field, this means that more of this cultural currency allows you to be more familiar with people of different types and classes. This is essentially equivalent to relevance for your brand. There have been persons and brands who essentially shot to stardom overnight.
However, there is a difference between strategically gaining organic cultural currency and building your brand around paid ads. Cultural currency is something that is earned and not bought. This should be your guide in creating content and maintaining engagement, especially since subcultures extend more than simple visual aesthetics. There are ideas and values shared among these communities and being able to tap into them could mean growth for your brand.
4. Establish Your Brand as an Advocate
Understanding that a subculture is a community bound by its own rules, values, and philosophies, brands should learn to respect them first if they want to be accepted into it. Some subcultures are content sharing ideas among themselves while others fight for recognition and advance specific advocacies like gender or cultural representation or biodiversity conservation.
Establishing your brand shouldn’t stop with just gaining access to your target market. The more you connect with the members of a subculture, the more your brand becomes associated with it. Pursuing the same goals sets up your brand not only within the subculture but even beyond it. Being an advocate means your brand will be empowered to lead the charge and can open up opportunities for engagement and collaboration in the future, connecting you even to the mainstream.
Conclusion
With the hype surrounding TikTok, it’s safe to say that it won’t be going anytime soon. Whether for personal consumption or for marketing purposes, the content available on the platform can give users better insights into what subcultures exist and how they can relate to them. In growing your brand, remember that authenticity is the key; sharing their values and goals will endear you to the people and in return, will repay your efforts with their loyalty and support.
