TikTok Might Actually Get Banned. This is What Brands Should Do
One small business is “going all in” on Meta.
Yesterday, Biden signed a bill that could ban TikTok in the U.S.
The legislation, which has been fast-tracked because it’s attached to a greater funding package for military aid in Israel and Ukraine, passed in the House of Representatives over the weekend and in the Senate on Tuesday. The law will remove TikTok from app stores unless its parent company ByteDance sells its majority stake to a US-based company.
The previous bill that received approval in March gave ByteDance six months to sell TikTok. The new bill gives the tech giant nine months to sell its stake (with a three-month extension if a sale is close to being made). While there’s hope that a U.S. buyer will swoop in and purchase the company from ByteDance, there’s no promise that its new owner won’t drastically change the app’s user experience. After Elon Musk acquired Twitter, changing its name to X was one of the lesser drastic changes he made to the platform.
But TikTok has made it clear: it will do everything in its power to prevent a sale.
For content creators who became influencers by amassing their largest social following on TikTok, a ban would threaten their careers. Without TikTok’s Creator Fund or opportunities to create sponsored content within the app, creators will have to learn how to monetize their brand across other platforms.
It’s not just influencers who will be shaping the future of the creator economy, though. Brands big and small will play an essential role in setting the tone for what a world without TikTok looks like for social media marketing strategies.
TikTok viral brands & their Gen Z audiences
TikTok’s slant towards authenticity and relatable content has not only helped influencers find success on the platform but has allowed brands to build a robust social following. Keeping up with trends on the app and leaning into a Gen Z audience has propelled several companies into unlikely TikTok fame.
Three of these brands that stand out for early success on TikTok are language learning platform Duolingo, Irish budget airline Ryan Air, and news outlet The Washington Post.
With its 11.7 million followers, Duolingo has put its iconic owl mascot front and center of all of its videos (which are mostly comedic and rarely educational). Ryan Air, with 2.2 million followers, participates in trends while gently making fun of itself for being an extremely low-budget airline. The Washington Post has built a community of 1.7 million followers by putting video journalist Dave Jorgenson as the face of the account, posting easy-to-digest, entertaining news skits.
While Duolingo and The Washington Post will no longer be able to use TikTok if it's banned in the US, Ryanair will still be able to post on the app. However, it will lose American followers and potential flyers. All three brands must figure out how to move their audiences to a different social media platform — the most likely alternative being Instagram.
Operated by Meta and the sister company to Facebook, Instagram has been preparing for the moment that TikTok ceases to exist in the U.S. The app launched reels in August 2020 amid the rise in popularity of TikTok during the pandemic. Reels has evolved alongside TikTok — continuously updating its video-length limits, filters, and “For You Page” style discovery algorithm.
While Reels allows users to post videos to a separate feed, the user experience is still native to Instagram. For brands who established a presence on the platform before TikTok became popular and Reels were introduced, pivoting back to Instagram may look different given their current social strategies.
Duolingo, which has 2.8 million followers on Instagram, has leaned into its Gen Z audience by cross-posting most of its TikTok content to Reels and sharing memes on its main feed. While it has fewer followers on Instagram, Duolingo will likely be able to gain some from TikTok by posting more video content to Reels.
On the other hand, Ryan Air differentiates the types of content it produces between TikTok and Instagram. The airline, which has 1.4 million Instagram followers, posts about special ticket discounts, destinations it adds to its roster, and sprinkles in a meme every so often. It also posts its TikTok content, however, these appear in the grid with a cover slide reading “Video Memes.” The airline plays into its Gen Z audience on Instagram — but carefully. It aims to deliver more information about the brand, rather than just entertaining content.
The Washington Post, however, is an outlier when it comes to its social media strategy. The news site’s goofy, entertaining TikTok presence is buttoned-up and far more serious on Instagram. As a legacy publication, it makes sense. With 6.8 million followers — about 5 million more than TikTok — its Instagram posts feature news and infographics, while Reels feature interview snippets and animated explainers. No content is cross-posted from TikTok.
For brands that want to lean into Instagram amid the impending TikTok ban, success on the platform hinges on the audience that these brands have already built. Brands that maintain a Gen Z audience on both Instagram and TikTok will not have a hard time navigating the platform’s downfall. However, brands that maintain very separate TikTok and Instagram audiences must learn to leverage Reels to draw in their former TikTok followers.
Small businesses face a challenge, but it’s actually an opportunity
It’s important to note that Duolingo, Ryan Air, and The Washington Post don’t make an effort to directly sell followers a product or adopt an influencer-marketing strategy to gain new customers. After all, their product is less relevant to buyers than their virality on the app.
For most other brands, it’s a different story. Rather than create a native brand identity on TikTok, they outsource this by onboarding influencers to create content featuring their products. This is most often seen in the beauty industry, with brands like Milk Makeup, Supergoop, and Tarte Cosmetics selling viral beauty products that take over users’ feeds. With more than enough beauty influencers out there, brands can commission creators to make content around these products rather than doing it themselves.
The Instagram profiles of Milk, Supergoop, and Tarte look similar to their TikTok content but with editorial photos. However, these three brands have been around long before the days of TikTok, and have been participating in influencer marketing since YouTube’s peak. If TikTok disappeared, these brands would be able to rely on large social followings across platforms and find influencers to promote their products wherever they go next.
However, for newer, smaller brands that are aiming to build an audience on TikTok, the application’s potential ban poses a threat. It also poses an opportunity.
Izzy Howell and Stefanie Rodriguez, co-founders of lingerie brand Highly Liquid, found rapid success in posting mood board aesthetic slideshows on TikTok. They gained over 116,000 likes and earned nearly 2,600 followers from posting 28 videos — a small amount of content to achieve such numbers. But after the news broke that Biden signed the ban, Izzy and Stefanie decided it was time to pivot away from TikTok.
“I don’t think we have another six months of it, so why as a small business owner would I put any time into something that’s not going to have any return for me?” said Izzy in a Zoom interview. “Unless it fully comes back, then we’ll use it.”
For its influencer marketing strategy, Highly Liquid works with influencers to exchange its products for content. While this is easy to replicate across other social media platforms, leaving behind TikTok means no longer using TikTok Shop to sell products. For Izzy and Stefanie, that’s a good thing.
Highly Liquid’s most popular product is its “Yes Chef” thong, which retails for $25. Izzy and Stefanie discussed how many TikTok users were confused about the price, claiming they could get “7 pairs of underwear for $7 on TikTok Shop.” However, the co-founders shared that it’s likely that those cheaper garments are a result of fast fashion and the exploitation of workers and the environment.
“We have a lot of friends in the founder space who are trying to create businesses that pay workers fairly and who are trying to make stuff that is environmentally sustainable… and then they try to sell those things on TikTok Shop and then the market won’t buy it because they're buying everything from Temu,” said Stefanie. “It's really bad, and it’s hurting small businesses that are trying to be responsible and make a real change.”
For Highly Liquid, they’ve “gone all-in” on Meta. Izzy and Stefanie are passionate about marketing their products on Instagram because not only has the brand had the highest engagement on the platform, but it has led to the most conversions. This is most likely because people are more accustomed to the app’s shopping feature, which tends to list more expensive items for sale.
“My advice for small business owners is to look at what's working and what's really working for you. And then once you feel like that’s stable, explore other options,” said Izzy.
One of two things will happen once Biden passes the TikTok ban. Either the application won’t find a buyer in the next nine months and be removed from app stores, or the forced sale will occur and a large company will buy out Bytedance’s majority stake.
But if the latter happens, TikTok faces an existential crisis. The app as we know and love it will likely change the hands of a new owner. The algorithm may shift, the interface might look different, and top-performing creators on the platform may have to make new types of videos. Even the name may change. The future of the application hangs in a balance, no matter the outcome of the forced sale.
I guess it’s time to start making Reels.