Rapid growth on social media, widely measured through follower counts and engagement, comes from two key platforms: LinkedIn, which is still the leading platform for B2B, and TikTok, where users spend on average an hour and a half every day consuming content.
LinkedIn & TikTok need more content
Only about 1% of LinkedIn’s 260 million monthly users share posts on a weekly basis. People on the network aren’t overwhelmed by content and want to consume more of it. This does not mean that every post you publish will become viral, but there is a greater possibility of increasing your audience.
The situation is fairly similar on TikTok. While some estimate as many as 83% of TikTok’s 1 billion users have posted at least one video, the vast majority don’t post regularly. This means the majority of LinkedIn and TikTok users consume information far more often than they make it.
What should you post?
It is important to know that any content – be it a quick video or a long text post – performs better when it receives a lot of comments. The comments must be somehow engaging; they don’t need to be controversial but they must capture attention, and that is what drives virality. On both platforms, we can notice that posts that are popular have become so because they are engaging and generate conversation, not because of the type of posts themselves.
On the other hand, the size of content doesn’t matter. You don’t have to create a wordy post when marketing on LinkedIn or a long video to promote your brand on TikTok; you may see greater success with a few short sentences and a question asking others whether they agree or disagree.
Conversations often need a bit of a push to begin. Even the most influential users may need to ask their close network to comment on or like content, which helps get the ball rolling. By doing so, they are not necessarily gaming the system or spamming, but it does give them a head-start in presenting to the system that there’s something worthy of eyeballs there.
Trends on LinkedIn and TikTok
Some of the most important new features that we have seen on LinkedIn are:
- Post templates with clickable links is a new LinkedIn tool that makes it simpler than ever to create interesting, actionable content.
- Page Commitments, a brand-new component on LinkedIn Pages enables businesses to emphasise their core values to potential partners and employees.
- And last but not least, you can pin comments direct from your audience, and allow others to market for you. This directs user focus to comments that the page wishes to highlight.
If you want to learn more about the latest LinkedIn updates, you can refer to this article.
We covered a number of new TikTok features recently, following a special event organised by the social network in London. TikTok is the platform with the most expansion; they recently launched a variety of updated creation and editing tools to expand the potential of TikTok content. Users now have more creative freedom, can tell deeper stories, and can bring their content ideas across multiple formats thanks to these new editing tools.
Additional platform to explore for social growth
Platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are competing for more short content in order to lure Gen Z and new users. While it may have lost favour recently, YouTube is still the world’s second-largest platform, with 2.5 billion users, and videos published on there are searchable; this means even an old video may be seen by people for a long time, unlike on TikTok, Instagram, or LinkedIn. YouTube should therefore be included in a long-term marketing strategy.
To summarise, if you want to grow quickly, focus your efforts on platforms where your customers spend the most time, and if you need an extra resource in the long run, include YouTube in your plan.
About the Author
Jennifer is a digital marketing consultant at AccuraCast.
