Since digital became the center of our commercial universe, marketing has sometimes felt like gambling.
For years, your brand treated Google like a casino. If you played your SEO strategy just right, customers would spin the wheel with search terms and find your products right at the top. As long as you kept playing your cards right, your brand kept hitting the jackpot.
But the payoff just hasn’t felt the same lately. You used all the right keywords on your last campaign, but the young audience you need isn’t showing up in the same way. Is it simply a case of bad luck? Or has the game changed?
Businesses like yours have grown dependent on Google, but the search engine was never the real target audience. Instead of throwing all your time and effort on a search result gamble, you should look to your customers. As social media channels like TikTok have supplanted search for finding information, you need to meet your audience where they are to find the real action.
Why gaming search pushed customers toward alternative options
Google is in the business of allowing users to comb the whole internet for information. If your brand wanted to attract customers, it just needed to reverse engineer the algorithm to top the right pages.
But users have grown suspicious of search results. When they look for specific information, the results generated by Google are either paid ads or sites that have been SEO-tweaked within an inch of their lives. The content wasn’t so much informative as it was designed to fulfill the algorithm’s requirements. Or, the content that rose to the top landed there because it was really popular, but didn’t suit your customer’s interests.
Between finding search results that were too broad or lacked authenticity, users experienced a “filter failure” with Google. The search engine returned plenty of options, but it offered no indication of who to trust or where to focus.
Enter the influencer.
Social media is the new Google for young audiences
If your brand is targeting Generation Z or younger, your audience spends the bulk of their time on social media platforms. Rather than relying on what Google finds, young users apply social searching to resolve their problems, find recommendations, or just see something fun.
On channels like YouTube and TikTok, your audience doesn’t even need to bother searching for something to find what they need. They gather information from the content creators they trust.
Whether through the force of their personality or unique videos, these influencers captivate their audience. For your customers, influencers act as a recommendation engine to potentially guide them to what they need.
Influencer marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all effort
Of course, supercharging your digital marketing isn’t as simple as hiring the influencer with the biggest audience. Even if users are too young to type in search windows, they already navigate from one voice to the next on YouTube. And they know how to find what they want.
Social media usage has evolved to where your customers aren’t necessarily gravitating to influencers with the biggest audiences. Young consumers are just as likely to trust fellow fans with small followings who are creating content that references your brand.
This tier of influencers is posting more out of genuine love of the product, which resonates with fans like them. On a platform like TikTok, even these “regular” content creators can reach thousands of viewers and be rewarded for consistent success. Your brand needs to be aware of influencers at each level to identify possibilities to connect with its audience.
Obviously, your brand shouldn’t delete its website and burn every SEO guideline to focus on social media. You need to connect with every prospective customer, wherever they may be searching. And you should have a presence on the same channels they use.
Know your audience to learn how your brand should approach social media
For all the search activity and content creation social media drives, your brand doesn’t need a presence on every platform. But you should be aware of the conversations that are taking place.
Once you recognize consumer behavior on a channel, you have the opportunity to work with creators to co-create content that elevates your brand. Each platform has its own algorithm that brings content to the surface. But don’t think of social media channels as systems that should be gamed to your advantage like Google.
Instead, listen to how your audience interacts with your brand and its products on their own.
Brands capitalize on fan-created unboxing videos
Social media demonstrated its capacity to set trends — and content priorities for brands — with the rapid spread of unboxing videos. First popularized on YouTube in the mid 2010s, unboxing videos simply feature fans removing their recent purchases from their packaging and setting them up for use.
The videos started as a way for content creators to share their excitement about bringing home a video game console, new gaming title, toy, or any other product. As fellow fans looked to feed their own anticipation, they started using “unboxing” as a search term to watch other people's experiences.
Before brands realized what was happening, their fans were starting and responding to a growing trend. According to one recent study, one-fifth of the top 100 YouTube channels for kids feature unboxing. And the trend has expanded to other social networking platforms.
Now, brands have been responding to these videos by improving their packaging design to further build the anticipation of the product reveal. Additionally, brands have been leveraging the popularity of these videos by factoring influencers into their marketing plans for the buildup of the release.
How TikTok users find and elevate interesting content
The buzziest platform among the coveted young audience, TikTok isn’t really a communication platform like Twitter or Facebook. Instead, the name of the game for your brand is understanding that the best content wins.
Unlike other platforms, TikTok doesn’t pull information from user data to inform its algorithm. Instead, it’s based more on their interests. Whatever a user consumes, TikTok then brings more content to the surface based on those patterns.
To be successful on TikTok, you have to understand the content created about you. Then, you can build an understanding of whether you have an opportunity to create something with your fans.
TikTok users apply popular search terms to create content that will elevate their post under the right topic pages or hashtags. Whether an influencer or a first-time creator posts a video, the platform’s constant churn offers the promise of finding an audience.
TikTok’s terms can also jump to other platforms. After women on TikTok began posting Animal Crossing content under the term “Cozy Games,” the name stuck. Creators then began developing content on other social platforms using the same terms, which can apply to Animal Crossing or games like it. That way, whatever they created was sure to find the right audience.
If your brand is classified under a TikTok term, you should weave that into your stories, taglines, or advertising. But if you aren’t paying attention to how your brand is being talked about, you won’t be able to join the conversation.
Social media SEO is a whole new game for brands
TikTok may be the channel of the moment, but its popularity doesn’t mean your brand needs its own presence on the platform. You first have to understand whether a significant portion of your audience is there. Then, you need to be aware of the nomenclature and culture that has developed around your brand.
Listening to your audience is critical to ensuring your brand is found when your fans go looking for information. Whether we’re talking about TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram or Discord, each platform offers a destination where your fans can connect and talk about your brand. You need to be ready to meet them there.
