4 New TikTok Features and How Your Brand Can Activate On Them
TikTok is evolving at the same rate as TikTok trends. With over a billion active users on the app, it’s important for your brand to stay in the know. New features are being tested and rolled out by the month, and it can be hard to keep up.
We’re outlining the four latest features your brand needs to know so you can understand how they work, and how your brand can use them to boost sales, connect with your audience, and stay relevant.
TikTok Now
TikTok Now is all about capturing a moment. It’s a feature within TikTok that sends out a daily prompt to every user at the same time. When posting, it takes a photo or 10-second video out of the front and back cameras simultaneously. You can’t upload or edit pictures. You also can’t view other user’s TikTok Now until you’ve posted your own.
The post can only be viewed by other users until the next daily prompt goes out, then it disappears. You can view your own expired posts, but nobody else can.
If you’ve ever used BeReal, TikTok Now will look very familiar. From the user experience to the notifications, it’s all the same.
The complete TikTok now experience - source
How brands can use TikTok Now
Sour Patch Kids is having fun - source
Although TikTok Now is not the most brand-friendly feature, there are still ways to get creative. Here’s a few ideas to get your brand started:
A discount code that only lasts 24 hours
Behind the scenes of what’s happening in your office or maybe at a photoshoot
A sneak peak of a product or feature
It’s really about having fun with this new feature in the TikTok app and capturing the real-time reality, so lean into that. There’s already a few brands out there doing it on BeReal and those ideas translate perfectly to TikTok Now.
TikTok Nearby
Not rolled out to everyone yet, TikTok Nearby is a feature on the way. Once available, all posts that have a location close to you are displayed in its own feed within TikTok. This provides TikTok yet another way to serve users even more personalized content.
Sounds familiar? It should, it’s not a brand new idea. Snapchat has a “Snap Map” that plays off a similar idea. There is still a good opportunity for an app to get this feature right.
How brands can use Nearby
TikTok Nearby is going to be a huge opportunity for any brand (big or small business) that has a retail location and wants to get users in-store or any brand that only provides local services.
A fun way to activate around the feature might be to use influencer marketing. Hire an influencer local to an area. Have them come to your store and post a new video using the location.
Another idea: let’s say you have a car painting business that can only serve a certain town. Start creating TikToks that educate and entertain, along with that location attached. Content can still go viral and be relevant to anyone, but with location attached, good chances are that the TikTok algorithm would favor it and serve it on that Nearby feed…AKA your target audience.
One last idea: let’s say you work for a big retail brand that sells a product. Maybe skateboards. You can check the top territories in the analytics section of your TikTok account. Create your own video of someone hiding brand new skateboards in a well-known location in one of your top territories and let everyone know it’s up for grabs. This is a fun way for even a large brand to engage a local audience using TikTok.
This is what TikTok Nearby will look like from the TikTok homepage - source
TikTok Stories
TikTok Stories are—you guessed it—TikTok’s version of Instagram Stories. It’s the same concept. You have the same tools you can use in regular TikToks too; use the green screen, duet with another TikTok, or slap a filter and some stickers on. Users can post photos or video content up to 15 seconds that disappear 24 hours after clicking that share button.
TikTok Stories don’t show up at the top of the home screen like in Instagram. You can tell when TikTok users have posted to their Stories because the creator’s avatar will be highlighted in your For You Page and on their TikTok Profile.
TikTok Stories example
Although it didn’t take off immediately, there are now over 500 million active daily Instagram Stories users. The use took off once Instagram became overly aesthetic. Users stopped posting to their feed as much because they didn’t want something permanently on their profile, eventually welcoming the impermanence of Stories.
TikTok seems to slowly be heading in the same aesthetic direction.
And as TikTok says, Stories allows for “creative expression true to the platform without thinking too much about content strategy.”
How brands can use TikTok Stories
TikTok Stories is a great opportunity for brands to create videos or photos that also “lose” a little aesthetic and be more personable or engaging with followers. Brands should be using TikTok Stories to share:
Exclusive content such as a flash sale
“Unfiltered” content such as behind the scenes of photoshoots or product creations
Sneak peaks to new products or releases
The biggest opportunity for TikTok stories though is that it allows brands to easily engage and converse with their audience such as the poll tool, reply, or ask.
TikTok Live Shopping
Last, but not least, is TikTok’s Live Shopping—also referred to as “the QVC for the social media age.” It’s slowly making its way to the US as of November 2022 as ByteDance is seeing big success in China.
The specifics are still in the works as it gets rolled out and the details will matter. The verdict is still out on whether it’ll work in the US. Other social media platforms have tried its own version such as Meta with Facebook Live Shopping which was quickly shut down as they saw users gravitate more to short-form video.
However, in a world where posts on a social media app can feel fake, live streaming can be a much more intimate experience. 71% of users have already claimed to shop for the products they come across on TikTok videos, so this shopping experience is a natural fit.
How brands can use Live Shopping
Live Shopping was created with the intention of giving users an opportunity to learn, engage, AND shop a brand. Obviously many brands will want to utilize TikTok Live Shopping once available, but those that succeed will have a solid strategy that includes the learning and engaging part.
The way not to use it is just hopping on and throwing products in peoples faces. What brands should do is:
Have an engaging host, consider using a well known TikTok creator or influencer
Engage with the audience by making sure there’s a moderator during the live stream to feed comments to the host and make sure all comments are appropriate
Provide incentive to shop live streams by having exclusivity in the products, a good deal, or a way to see more of the product that you can’t find anywhere else
The Live Shopping experience can be highly produced—or not. It really depends on the product, the brand, and the host. We’ve seen success both ways.
TikTok livestream with CeraVe
e.l.f. partnered with Walmart and Meredith Duxbury for a TikTok live stream
Learn more about these TikTok Live Streams and how your brand can capitalize on live shopping in our upcoming webinar, Live Shopping in 2023: Landscape & Opportunities.
Now that you’re all caught up on the latest, it’s time to get brainstorming on which of these features your brand should try first. Looking to get even more involved in TikTok? Here are three strategies your brand needs to think about.
