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Brand Strategy Community Marketing

How to utilize TikTok for community management

By Abby Reilly, Social Media Manager

Wilderness

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The Drum Network article

This content is produced by The Drum Network, a paid-for membership club for CEOs and their agencies who want to share their expertise and grow their business.

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October 28, 2022 | 8 min read

It’s human nature to want to feel part of something. Looking to brands such as Ryanair and Mercedes, Abby Reilly of Wilderness explains the power of community in creating an online presence and how brands can grow simply by being relatable.

Worker bees

Humanization of your brand breeds a sense of community that encourages participation among consumers / Beeing via Unsplash

TikTok is the platform every brand wants to conquer to generate sales, engagement and virality. But with its individually-curated algorithm, sometimes trending audio or great content isn’t enough to break the back of TikTok and get your name in front of those coveted 45.3 million daily users.

Brands are having to get creative – TikTok’s USP is all about user-generated, trending content driven by personalized video consumption. Enter the power of effective community management.

What is community management, and why is it important?

Community management is the process of building a community on social media through engagement, authenticity and interaction. This can be anything from a simple ‘like’ on someone’s comment to articulating conversation in comments, direct messages, groups and threads.

Effective community management is imperative to a brand’s social media strategy and ensuring that awareness and engagement is maintained across platforms to build positive rapport – not just among fans, but among the competitive marketplace too.

The ‘admin’ persona and humanization of brands on social media have become ever more popular, even feeding into viral moments and groundbreaking strategies. It sparks conversation with and among core consumer bases, building communities. It elevates brand tone of voice and builds on core marketing pillars that have stood the test of time.

Through effective, relevant community management, a brand can literally transform its perspective to fans – and prospective consumers. Online communities can boost engagement by up to 21%, so it’s vital to get it right.

Reactive is the new planned

Reactive marketing is not a new concept, but with the rise of TikTok, it has become even more important to incorporate into a larger marketing strategy. The demand for reactive marketing is enormous. Brands are constantly looking for new ways to engage with their customers and compete.

One of the many ways that brands are transforming their strategies is through reactive community management: hijacking viral videos, trending conversations and even using other brand and user communities are great ways to make an impact in a saturated, social world.

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Work smarter, not harder

Interacting with similar brands on social media is an excellent way to tap into other audiences and elevate awareness of your brand within a relevant community.

Engaging in conversation in a similar brand’s comment section, or probing them to respond, is an effective strategy for growing your audience through brand personality and relationships. Crossing your brand with other sectors is also an intelligent way to find new audiences organically and contribute to platform growth.

Ryanair and The Alchemist on Twitter

Be a fan

The celebrity and influencer space on TikTok has a huge presence – take advantage of it. A huge following means huge reach and a loyal fanbase to engage with, where you can bring your brand to life through community engagement and personality.

Authenticity is a key trust metric among brand consumers, so keeping it relevant is important. If you’re looking to recruit generation Z, try commenting on content from social media moguls such as Kylie Jenner.

Engaging as a fan within niche communities is a great way of building a presence. Take the Mercedes-AMG F1 TikTok account, for example. They’ve elevated the sub-category of #RodgerTok, building talkability into their strategy, and created an opportunity to create a content thread via capitalizing on the USP of @rodgercleye (he performs covers of songs). This is a potential groundbreaking opportunity in viral audio.

Identify opportunity

By identifying the latest trends via social listening dashboards and research, brands can find loyal, niche communities to engage with. Understanding your audience and buying personas and being able to utilize this information for impact on social media is vital.

CeraVe, for example, understands its position as a skincare brand and finds opportunities to comment on viral videos featuring bathrooms. This is a creative and ‘outside the box’ strategy that will help you stand out among competitors.

CeraVe

At Wilderness, we practice this proactive form of community management for our clients to execute engaging campaign management. Below is an example of how we identified a viral video with the opportunity to promote Now TV’s catalog.

Interstellar is a blockbuster hit with an iconic soundtrack, so when @keystutorials went viral with their rendition, we knew we had to jump on this and seize the opportunity for reactive content that linked to Now TV’s brand identity. This approach can be applied across platforms to bring in more results.

Now TV on Instagram

Know your limits

The most important part of growing your TikTok following via engaging community management is knowing your limits. Does it fit your brand tone of voice? Does it make sense to engage here?

At Wilderness, we can help to identify all of the above and execute content that is bound to help you grow. If you’re struggling to find your target community, understand social trends and connect with audiences, why not drop us a line to see how we can help?

Brand Strategy Community Marketing

Content by The Drum Network member:

Wilderness

Working at the intersection of community and commerce we embed brands in online culture through social-first thinking.

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