Social media marketing reaches a wider audience, but it also reaches the right audience. Using the data that platforms collect on their users – such as their age, sex, interests, and behaviour – advertisements are shown to those most likely to interact with, and purchase, a good or a service.

Targeted advertising is how social media platforms make money and why users don’t pay for their accounts. It also personalises the user experience and increases the brand marketing ROI by maximising the financial return on advertising costs.

A challenge to the hegemony

Peculiarly, the social media landscape isn’t quite as competitive as is perhaps assumed. Though technically oligopolistic, the market is dominated by Meta. In the UK, Meta accounts for 70% of market share through its ownership of Facebook and Instagram.

But there is a challenger in the ranks: TikTok, which has been consolidating its position since the 2018 merger of Musical.ly and Douyin. TikTok’s growth story is unprecedented in a market that is notoriously unfriendly to outsiders. Importantly, it is the first non-Meta owned app to be downloaded 3.5 billion times.

TikTok was a pandemic success story. Its short form video format was, and continues to be, a winner with Gen Zers who want access to an insurmountable amount of content, all the time. TikTok’s editing capabilities and video filters allow trends to be copied, altered, and re-posted by stars, celebrities, and friends. It was a masterstroke in content creation that has generated 535 billion #entertainment hashtag views.

Marketing on TikTok

TikTok’s user explosion has made the platform a favourite for brands and marketers with a target audience aged between 15 and 25. And according to a recent Statista survey, TikTok users are happier to tolerate advertising in exchange for free access to social media than non-TikTok users.

TikTok users are also natural content creators who are 2.3x more likely than other platform users to create a post and tag a brand, according to TikTok for Business.

It now seems essential to have TikTok as part of a brand’s social media strategy to maintain relevance and exploit engagement opportunities.

Introducing Iconosquare

Iconosquare’s mission is to make the lives of social media managers and marketers easier. Using a single dashboard, marketers can schedule social media posts, interact with a post’s comments, and crunch the performance data.

The company started ten years ago by offering Instagram analytics. Since then, they’ve grown to include Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to their arsenal. They’ve also added scheduling tools, dashboard reports, and the ability to moderate a post’s comments.

Developing alongside the market, Iconosquare offers a full-service lifeline to social media marketers covering the full life of a post: from the scheduling, to the posting, to the analysis of the performance.

“If you can’t measure your performance on social media, you can’t improve your posts”, says Iconosquare’s Head of Product, Mourougane Sivamalnessane. “It is essential for social media managers to access their analytics and create reports on engagement.”

Iconosquare’s TikTok scheduler

TikTok’s rising star in the social media market, alongside its attraction to social media marketers, made an Iconosquare-TikTok crossover inevitable.

According to Mourougane, “our clients were requesting a TikTok scheduler as they were using the platform more and more in their business because of the engagement it offers.”

Iconosquare has listened to their clients and is now releasing a TikTok scheduler. This scheduler will allow social media marketers and managers to utilise Iconosquare’s features on TikTok for the first time.

Alongside Iconosquare’s typical functions, the TikTok scheduler will allow the user to enable or disable TikTok’s ‘duet’ and ‘stitch’ features on posted videos, controlling how the video is interacted with. The scheduler will also feature an AI caption generator that can effortlessly create catchy captions for posts and will allow the user to easily select a thumbnail for their TikTok video.

Leading a changing landscape

As technology continues to evolve, the way products are sold online will change to. Undoubtably, the integration of artificial intelligence into everyday technology will be a pivotal change.

“It is going to be drastic, but I think it is going to be a positive change,” says Natasha Hylton, Iconosquare’s Partnerships Manager. “Ultimately, most things will be automated. This is why apps like Iconosquare are going to be so important. There will be less onus on the social media manager, and more on the platform that they use.”