Earlier this year, Hunter shared an article on TikTok – discussing how the app works, why it has become so popular, and how businesses can utilise this channel to reach their target audience.
Shortly after we shared this article, Hunter launched a TikTok business account. We have been using this platform to provide an insight into the PR industry, share exciting news from our agency, and even for job call-outs (targeting the Gen Z age demographic).
TikTok provides a fast-paced channel with a low-barrier to success – meaning that any account (business or personal) has an opportunity to reach an extensive global audience, no matter how many followers they have. The Hunter team experienced this first-hand, through a video published on our own TikTok page.
Until recently, our account had eight videos published, with the following analytics:
80 followers
An average of 1,431 views per video
Average of 71 likes per video
7 comments per video on average
An average of 5 shares per post
However, these analytics changed drastically through just one post.
We recently shared a video to promote an activation by our client, Forrest Chase. The project, ‘DayDream’, is a 90 second immersive experience, where visitors step inside a huge digital cube and enjoy a mesmerising light and sound show.
We visited DayDream to capture the experience, edited our footage into a 22 second TikTok video and shared on the platform.
This piece of content went ‘viral’, and within 48 hours we had grown from 80 to 800 followers, with the following analytics for our post:
131,100 video views
21,700 likes
1,000 comments
3,700 shares
Our TikTok analytics revealed our account growth rate (since launching our page) is now more than +4,000%.
These results clearly demonstrate how quickly an account can grow on TikTok, and the reach that is possible regardless of following and time spent on the app.
So, why did this piece of content perform so well?
1. Niche and hyper-localised On a channel where your content is competing with creators from all over the world, the more niche you can be, the better. Being niche allows TikTok to filter your content and show it to users that will be interested - based on the types of content they have previously engaged with.
Our target audience for this activation is Perth residents, as it is only accessible for people who are able to visit our city. Therefore, we made this piece of content hyper-localised, through the video copy, caption and hashtags.
Video copy: ‘Attention Perth’
Caption: ‘Immersive activation in Perth, by our client Forrest Chase’
Hashtags: #Perth #PerthTikTok #PerthLife
2. Visually engaging As TikTok is a highly visual video-sharing platform, it is crucial to capture and retain your audience’s attention for the entirety of the video. Content that is visually captivating and engaging will perform well on TikTok.
Our video featured high-quality, well edited footage of the light show, using transitions to make it even more engaging for the audience. To add a layer of human interest, we also showed a Hunter team member experiencing the activation. Having a person in the video helps the audience imagine their own experience, providing a form of ‘inspiration’ to help them visualise their own content.
This is demonstrated in the comments on our video, where many users commented:
“Would love to do a photoshoot here”
“We have to go and get photos”
“Imagine the pics we could get here”
3. Short and clear
On average, TikTok users view more than eight videos per minute – demonstrating how fast-paced this platform is. Although users can now make videos up to three minutes in length, most videos still sit between 15 – 60 seconds to retain the audience’s attention. This means that videos need to share all the key information, in a short amount of time.
Hunter’s video was just 22 seconds, and clearly shared the ‘Who, What, When, Where and Why’ during this time.
The starting frame stated “Attention Perth” - clearly highlighting our target audience for the video. Throughout the video, we explained what the activation was and the dates it would be running, to make it easy for the audience to understand.
As video content continues to be a fast-growing trend for social media – not just TikTok – we hope this case study is useful for businesses who have started (or are looking to start) using video on their platforms. We will continue to share our TikTok findings, as well as other social channels.