TikTok Influencer Marketing with Kristen Wiley from Statusphere (episode 120)
by April Buencamino-dyKristen Wiley is the founder and CEO at Statusphere, a matchmaking platform to help you scale, track and optimise your micro-influencer campaigns. She’s been running Influencer Marketing campaigns for over 10 years and is giving us all the ins and outs of how to run your first successful influencer marketing campaign on TikTok.
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How Kristen Got Into TikTok
Kristen’s first job out of college back in 2010 was for a PR agency that reached out to mommy bloggers.
Since then, she has seen the evolution of influencer marketing. She watched how Musical.ly became TikTok and how the younger generation were all on it.
In 2020, she integrated TikTok as an offering on her influencer marketing platform, and has since been running TikTok campaigns for brands.
Who are the micro influencers?
For Kristen, anyone who can influence the buying decision is an influencer. This goes to show that the human connection is what’s important in marketing.
In the online space, micro influencers are those with over 2000 followers and 3.5% engagement on Instagram. On Tiktok, follower count is not relevant and what is focused on is average loops or video play. To be considered a micro influencer in Statusphere’s case, they’re looking at a threshold of 2000 loops.
Is TikTok for you?
TikTok is for any brand that’s willing to work with raw creative content. You’ll do well on the platform if you allow the creators you work with to get really creative.
As long as you have the time and you put in the effort, any brand can do well on TikTok. As with any other platform, it will take time, iteration, and learning to get the most out of it.
Working with Micro Influencers
Before anything else, make sure you’ve already tested out the platform. Get on it and follow other brand accounts because that’s the best way to learn and find out for yourself the kind of content you want to put out.
There are a couple of ways to find influencers you can work with. You can get on Creator Marketplace, sign up, and search by creator. You can also search for hashtags around your product, find creators through that, reach out to them, and negotiate your value exchange. Depending on your product, there are also a few ways to do this.
When working with influencers, understand that they know their audience and they know the platform well.
Tracking Your TikTok Performance
Brands have to understand that the user and buyer’s journey is no longer just a one-click checkout. And on TikTok, it’s a whole other level because TikTok doesn’t want users to leave the platform.
One way Kristen recommends tracking performance is by understanding when you’re running your influencer or TikTok campaigns. Take note when a campaign takes off and find out where you see the spike.
Don’t miss out on a great channel just because you think you can’t track it. Understand that you have to look at your traffic overall as you’re running your campaigns.
Insider Tips
If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with TikTok – what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
Just get on TikTok and spend enough time on the platform to understand it.
If you’re intimidated by it, start out as a regular user, see how it affects your buying decisions, and you’re going to see TikTok’s power.
Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve TikTok performance?
Follow other brand accounts that are doing great things on TikTok and learn from them.
Additionally, TikTok trends change quickly so you have to move with it. If there’s any red tape in the business you run especially when it comes to posting content, break them down if you want to do well on the platform.
If someone listening wants to learn more about TikTok is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?
There are plenty of TikTok resources on Statusphere, and they also hold webinars every month.
Their most popular webinar, How Brands are Driving Sales with TikTok, is free to watch on the site.
Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in TikTok?
TikTok is pulling traffic away from Google search and based on studies, the younger generation is more likely to search things on TikTok than Google.
This is an interesting change in dynamic and something that marketers should look into.
Interview Links
Kristen on Social media:
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