Top 10 tips helping founders & startups win on TikTok

The most important thing is finding the right person who identifies with your brand voice & mission that your audience can see themselves in – this can be you as a founder, someone on your team, or someone you find in your community or externally.

Participating in trends to maintain relevance is important, but “not selling” is just as crucial as you create direct content for your products/services. Be authentic, add value to users through education or humor, and be creative.

 With TikTok, especially in the early days of growing a following, you need to be consistent and give your followers a reason to come back for more.

If anything was universally recommended by the founders & TikTok experts I spoke with, it was that you can’t just sell things on TikTok. You need to participate in the TikTok community and trends, giving your team the freedom to be creative.

Don't use TikTok just to "sell"; use it to learn. You can learn so much by interacting with folks in the comments, soliciting feedback, and being aware of what is trending in your niche. 

After speaking with so many founders, it was clear that many of their first viral videos were random or happened by chance – it’s difficult to manufacture virality on TikTok on Day 1. It often takes experimentation with different series, content styles, and sounds to find your rhythm / build an audience.

TikTok is all about experimentation, and you don’t have to start from square one. It’s often helpful to observe and see what’s working for other accounts (or creators!) in your niche or adjacent ones before you get started. Maybe you’ll notice that no accounts in your niche are leveraging their mascot… could be an opportunity. Or maybe you’ll notic... See more

1. Find your niche. And trust me, your niche audience is likely bigger than you'd think.

2. Getting your first viral video. You usually can't plan for it, so create often.

3. Outsourcing vs. In-House Content: Should you hire a team of freelancers? Create content as a founder? Find someone internally? Really, it's up to you.

4. Stick with organic in

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Tracking the granularity of users that find you through TikTok is also important, especially as you scale. For eCommerce companies, usually the question you ask yourself is “does this person become a customer.”

If you’re a small team or startup just getting started, launching your own TikTok presence can be a great way to go.