TikTok’s musical roots, interactive interface, cheeky humour, and uplifting spirit encourage deep engagement as does the chance for sudden fame—creators and challenges can blow up overnight. With more than 1 billion users on the platform, 2021 is the ideal time for brands to crack TikTok’s code.
However, in order to create nuanced creative, strategic, and data-led tactics that work, brands require an understanding of the platform’s idiosyncrasies and metrics. Relatable, reactive and accessible content often reaps the most rewards.
Take a look at these TikTok metrics to help inform your strategy, campaigns, and influencer selection:
Public TikTok metrics
You can look at the metrics available publicly via the influencer’s TikTok profile to begin with:
Followers: The number of followers the influencer has on their TikTok account.
Views: The number of views a video receives. This can be seen in the bottom left corner of the video thumbnail on the influencer’s profile. A view is counted as soon as a user opens the video.
Likes: The number of likes a video receives.
Comments: The number of comments a video receives.
Shares: The number of times the video has been shared.
Total Engagements: The sum of the likes, comments and shares a video receives.
Engagement Rate: The percentage of people who engaged with the video after viewing it, calculated as (likes + comments + shares) / views. This is the way TikTok calculates engagement rate in the TikTok Creator Marketplace.
TikTok Pro
TikTok Pro is a free account upgrade that allows users to access data to grow their account. Influencers with TikTok Pro accounts can access further insights on their channel and video performance so they can gain better understanding of their performance and engagement. You can request these internal insights from influencers for each individual video that is posted as part of a campaign.
From here, you can access the following:
Total Play Time: Total hours, minutes and seconds a video has been played.
Average Watch Time: The average number of seconds a video is watched for. This is useful as it indicates whether a video sustained users’ interest enough for them to watch the entire duration.
Traffic Source Types: Where a video’s traffic comes from. Viewers can find videos from the following sources: For You tab, Follow tab, personal profile, sound search and hashtag.
Reached Audience: The number of users who watched a video.
Audience Territories: The distribution of viewers by territory. This is useful if a client is aiming to reach a certain territory in particular.
Additional TikTok metrics
To delve further into influencer metrics, you can look at these additional insights:
Median Channel Views: The median views of an influencer’s TikTok channel. We suggest using the median as opposed to the average so this metric is not skewed by viral videos.
User-generated content (UGC): Content created by TikTok users that includes the campaign hashtag.
Participation: The number of UGC videos posted that use the campaign’s hashtag, along with:
- Total campaign hashtag views: The total number of views across all videos that use the campaign’s hashtag.
- Total campaign hashtag engagements: The total number of engagements across all videos that use the campaign’s hashtag.
Cost per view (CPV): Two CPVs can be reported:
- CPV based on total view count of contracted influencer content only.
- CPV based on total view count across the whole campaign, including views for UGC content using the campaign hashtag.
Cost per engagement (CPE): Two CPEs can be reported:
- CPE based on total engagements of contracted influencer content only.
- CPE based on total engagements across the whole campaign, including engagements for UGC content using the campaign hashtag.
TikTok’s Top Ads
This is an ad library created by TikTok that lets you search for best performing auction ads by vertical and region, and sort by CTR, impressions and video view rate. There’s also a section showing popular trends on the platform, along with a section called showcases that features mini ad case studies.
Kevyn Aucoin x Sephora TikTok Campaign
BDB put this into practice, partnering with five beauty-focused creators on TikTok to drive awareness and sales of Kevyn Aucoin at Sephora during the Holiday season.
Creators celebrated their extravagant Holiday hauls by showcasing the true power of the Kevyn Aucoin hero products when used together – all to the beat of a custom soundtrack produced exclusively for this activation.
Creators used their captions and text overlay to encourage their followers to enter the #HolidayIcon Sephora Sweepstakes for a chance to win a $175 Sephora gift card by following the brand and tagging Kevyn Aucoin and Sephora in the comments. 10 winners were then chosen. This ultimately increased brand awareness, grew the Kevyn Aucoin TikTok channel, and expanded upon pre-existing relationships with these TikTok creators.
Want to learn more about TikTok? Get in touch with a member of the BDB team to see how we can help your brand: [email protected]
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