TikTok helps consumers discover new products and brands while giving businesses a fun, engaging space to share their content, promote, and connect with their audience. As the most downloaded app in 2024 with 773 million downloads, TikTok drives growth and sales through built-in insights like audience demographics and account growth.
Whether you’re starting a new business or just looking to expand your social media presence, here’s how you can take advantage of TikTok.
Set up a TikTok business account
You can create your TikTok business account in three simple steps:
- Step 1: Download TikTok from the app store. Users can download the app for free by visiting their device’s app store, the Apple App Store (iPhone users) or the Google Play Store (Android users). Search for TikTok, tap Download, and follow the instructions to get started.
- Step 2: Set up your Business Account. In the app, tap the three dots (…) at the top right of your Profile page, go to Settings and privacy, select Manage account, and switch to a Business Account. Then, choose the category that best fits your business to unlock personalized content, events, and helpful tools.
- Step 3: Start creating. Get started and start creating content! Explore TikTok’s creative tools, test and produce videos, and have fun connecting with your audience. You can also visit the TikTok Business Center for additional guidance, resources, and tools to help your business get started.
Access your TikTok analytics
To view your TikTok analytics, access your profile, select the three lines in the top right corner, then choose “Creator Tools” and “Analytics.” This will take you to your analytics dashboard, where you’ll see three main categories tabbed at the top:
- Overview: A quick snapshot of your account’s performance, including video views, watch times, retention rate, and follower growth over the last seven days (with options to view 28 or 60 days). This is great for follower metrics and spotting what content is performing well.
- Content: Shows how your videos are doing, including likes, comments, shares, and how viewers are finding your posts.
- Followers: Tracks and provides insights into your audience and follower growth. You'll need at least 100 followers to unlock this section, which shows audience demographics and trends in gained or lost followers.
[Read more: Smart Ways to Leverage Social Media Analytics for Small Business Marketing]
Interpret your TikTok analytics
Understanding your posts’ performance data is the first step toward building and maintaining a presence on TikTok. By diving into these metrics, you can transform raw numbers into a clear social media content plan tailored to this platform’s audience.
Content analytics
The Content tab is your primary tool for evaluating how your videos perform over a specific period, usually the last seven days. This section highlights your latest posts and identifies "Trending" videos (those experiencing the fastest growth in views). These insights show you which of your creative experiments are gaining the most reach across the For You feed. Tracking these high-level trends helps you identify patterns in your most successful work so you can replicate those winning formulas.
Viewer analytics
Viewer analytics help you understand exactly who is consuming your content and how they discovered it. This section breaks down your traffic sources, showing whether people found you through the "For You" feed, their "Following" tab, or via a search query. Engagement rate metrics, such as likes, comments, and shares, indicate how effectively your content resonates with the people it reaches. Monitoring these behaviors allows you to refine your niche and ensure you are reaching an audience that truly values your unique voice.
Follower analytics
Building a community requires looking beyond simple numbers to understand the people behind the profiles. This tab provides essential follower insights, including demographic data such as gender and top territories (where the majority of your audience lives). More importantly, it shows when your audience is most active on the app; aligning your upload schedule with these peak activity periods increases the likelihood that your content will be seen immediately. The ultimate goal here is to foster a more consistent connection with your growing fan base and drive steady account growth.
LIVE analytics
If you use TikTok’s live streaming features, LIVE analytics provide a deep dive into your real-time performance and viewer retention. This category tracks total play time, new followers gained during a broadcast, and the number of unique viewers who tuned in. Analyzing these metrics helps you determine which topics or formats keep people around the longest, and make adjustments accordingly to convert casual viewers into dedicated, long-term followers.
Video analytics
For a more granular look, you can view specific data for every one of your TikTok videos. This section is where you find the average watch time and the retention rate, which tells you the exact moment viewers might be dropping off. If people are leaving within the first few seconds, it may be time to work on a stronger "hook." Conversely, videos with high completion rates signal to the algorithm that your content is worth promoting, helping you maintain a high level of visibility across the platform.
Speak directly to one person—your ideal client. Know what they struggle with, what they dream of, and how you help them close that gap.Vivian Weyll, speaker and entrepreneur
Best practices for using TikTok for your business
The following guidelines and practices will help set up your business for success when starting to post on TikTok.
Know who you’re trying to reach
Before you start creating and posting videos, keep in mind that long-term success on TikTok depends on establishing authority with the right audience—not just generating views for the sake of visibility.
“[Most business accounts] post just to stay ‘active,’ follow every trend, and confuse more content with more impact,” said Vivian Weyll, a speaker and serial entrepreneur known professionally as “The Sales Queen.” “People don’t want more noise; they want truth, clarity, and leadership.”
Weyll suggests businesses, instead, slow down and simplify: “Speak directly to one person—your ideal client. Know what they struggle with, what they dream of, and how you help them close that gap.”
To determine your target audience, think about what demographic you currently serve and whether you’d want to reach out to other users. Do you want to strengthen your relationship with existing customers or grow your audience? These decisions will help inform what content you want to create and when to post it.
[Read more: How to Write Engaging Scripts for Your Business Videos]
Establish your goals for TikTok marketing
If you have a new TikTok account, it might take time for the algorithm to find your content and deliver it to your audience. As with any business social media platform, you should focus on posting consistent, high-quality content before worrying about metrics and engagement. You should have an overarching objective for using TikTok for your business, but you can set and refine specific goals once your account is more established.
When setting goals for your business’s performance on TikTok, you could aim to achieve a certain follower count, reach a specific level of engagement or views, or drive traffic to your store from TikTok links. You could also set a goal to encourage user-generated content and have your audience share videos using your products, or build customer relationships by answering common questions and filming product orders being packaged. As your account begins to gain traction, experiment with different types of content to figure out what works best for your business.
Post content that will grab attention
When you’re planning what content to post on TikTok, it is important that you not only post content you know will perform well, but that you also try to incorporate strong hooks, pay attention to trends, and incorporate hashtags and music, while above all else remaining authentic.
TikTok is a “sound on” platform, which means sound and music are essential to the TikTok experience. Adding music or trending audio can grab your audience’s attention and keep them watching your videos. By putting your own spin on TikTok trends and remaining true to your brand, you can create the content that feels right for your business without trying too hard to go viral.
Businesses on TikTok often find success from posting informational content, including videos that explain an issue that your products solve or that demonstrate how to best use your products, as well as day-in-the-life and customer interaction posts. Incorporate relevant, popular hashtags to help people searching for related content find your page.
Refine your posting cadence and timing
To optimize the performance of the videos you post on TikTok, check your analytics to determine when your target audience is the most active. By posting according to this schedule, you should be able to drive audience engagement even further.
There are certain time periods on specific days that are considered the best times to post on TikTok, but for the most success, plan your content schedule around when your specific audience is the most active. The most important aspect is to post consistently, but if you have time for further optimization, explore what times are recommended in general for posting and what times your followers are most active.
Measure your return on investment
When you’re reviewing the benefits your TikTok account has for your business, there are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) you can measure to determine the return on investment. Specific KPIs to track can include post views, profile views, likes, comments, shares, traffic sources, and search queries. These all indicate different ways your audience interacts with your content and can inform whether posting on TikTok is worthwhile for your business.
As you look to expand your business, you can sell products on TikTok and use the platform for paid advertising and influencer partnerships. If you incorporate paid ads and influencer partnerships into your videos, you can share your business with an even larger audience. Paid ads will look like normal videos but can be promoted to reach more users, and these ads can be shoppable videos that users can directly make purchases through.
With influencers, you can partner with someone who has an established and engaged audience, ideally aligned with your customer persona. Partner with individuals who already use your product, or at least understand the service your business provides, and who share common values with your brand.
[Read more: How Micro-Influencers Can Benefit Your Small Business]
Benchmark against standout brands
As you gain greater familiarity with TikTok and grow your audience there, you should also see what other successful small businesses have done to grow their companies on the platform. Don’t be afraid to check out your competitors' TikTok accounts—they could be doing something you’re not, but you could do it better. Some popular accounts have found success on TikTok by sharing memes and funny videos, creating dance challenges, and partnering with celebrities or other businesses.
Consider running a TikTok competitor analysis at least once a year to identify emerging trends, gain a deeper understanding of your target audience, set realistic goals, and refine your strategy for ongoing impact on this ever-changing platform.
Lauren Wingo contributed to this article.
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