5 top takeaways from TikTok's Ready Set Grow Summit

5 top takeaways from TikTok's Ready Set Grow Summit

April 1, 2021

TikTok For Business, Editorial Team

Best PracticesPerspectivesSmall Business

Creators and e-commerce experts came together virtually on March 24, 2021 to share insider knowledge and empower brands that want to broaden their reach on the platform.

Small businesses are the soul of our communities, and we're committed to helping them make a comeback after a challenging year. We designed TikTok's first-ever event to help small business owners see the magic behind TikTok and explore opportunities to tap into our platform and reach new customers so that they can thrive.

Participants received a crash course in TikTok 101 and learned how to get started on the platform. They listened to inspiring success stories from small business leaders and discovered tips and tricks for creating content. Our experts dismantled misconceptions about the platform and revealed their best strategies for driving your brand’s message home.

If you missed TikTok’s Ready Set Grow summit, don’t worry—we’ve got you covered. We’ve compiled the top takeaways from the event so that you can feel confident, get creative, and start growing your business with the power of TikTok.

TikTok is a short-form mobile video platform that’s different from anything else out there. Playful and entertaining, TikTok provides viral opportunities that just don’t exist elsewhere. We give brands the opportunity to connect with, work with, and learn from TikTok creators—and to be a part of our highly-engaged communities.

But whether you’re learning from creators or taking cues from your community, being yourself always works best. Authenticity is essential on TikTok.

Ready to go? In just a few steps you can set up your business on TikTok:

1. Download the TikTok app and sign up for your account.
2. Search trends to get familiar with the platform.
3. Start creating content.

TikTok trends are a great way to see what’s happening on the platform and discover what people are buzzing about. If you’re new to making content on TikTok, trends are the perfect place to start. Think about how your brand can put its own spin on a trend to make it uniquely yours.

While you’re exploring trends and hashtags, you’ll notice something else: TikTok is home to numerous communities that care about many different things. These niche groups are one of the best things about TikTok. They love to discover new things and they love to shop. You can find them quickly, engage with them, and learn from them just by searching hashtags and jumping into conversations.

Best of all, these amazing communities span all ages, interests and demographics. TikTok’s not just for Gen Z. Everybody can find a niche group that resonates with their purpose on TikTok, including brands.

TikTok is designed to help people unleash their creativity, and that includes business owners and brand managers. That’s why we’ve made it so easy to develop original content that helps your business stand out. TikTok is filled with user-friendly tools that simplify the video production process—all you need is a smartphone. What you don’t need: polished, high-production content. The videos that perform best are those that look and feel like user-generated posts, and our templates make them a snap to create.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel because your followers like seeing what they already come to you for. Tools likeSmart VideoandTikTok Video Editor can help you transform your existing assets into something new. And trending topics show you what’s hot right now, so you can join existing conversations.

Sight is the most important sense for humans, and it’s normal for businesses to focus on the visual aspects of their message. But sound is just as essential—and it’s a huge reason why TikTok is so different. On most other platforms, people usually watch videos with the music and sound turned off. That’s not the case on TikTok, where sound is a critical part of the experience.

Dance beats can energize you, a soothing voice can calm you and a crack of thunder can make you jump. What we hear affects our brains differently than what we see, and by engaging both of these senses together, brands can intensify their audience’s response. Giving your audio a little extra attention can help take your TikTok to the next level.

E-commerce isn’t just about selling your products or services online. It’s also a powerful way to boost brand awareness and build loyalty with consumers around the world. It’s simple to set up your business for web sales thanks toTikTok’s partnership with Shopify,an e-commerce platform that includes everything you need to get started including online store templates and integrated payment processing.

Shopify and TikTok work together to put your brand in front of millions of TikTok users to expand your audience and increase your sales. For Shopify merchants, utilizing our app on Shopify is the quickest way to get set up with TikTok. Simply install the one-click Shopify pixel. You can start running conversion campaigns and go global in a matter of minutes.

We want to make it as easy as possible for small and medium businesses to join the conversation on TikTok. Getting started is a breeze. Creating engaging video and audio is a straightforward process with our user-friendly tools. Searching trends and finding communities is all part of the fun—setting up e-commerce is just a few clicks away. By tapping into the culture-shaping energy of TikTok, brands can reach new audiences and discover new opportunities to thrive and grow.