SOCIAL MEDIA
A TikTok ‘how to guide’ for nonprofits
A group of scholars of nonprofits offer 8 tips for building a TikTok community for your organization
Written by: Kimberly Wiley, Chelsea DeMasters, Micayla Richardson, Katherine Morgan, and Marlen Espinosa
Everyone around you is joining TikTok. Maybe you’re thinking it’s time you took the plunge. For an article published this year by the journal Public Administration, we spent hours scrolling nonprofit TikTok accounts and months talking with social media coordinators who braved this unchartered territory so that you don’t have to.¹ Here are eight bits of advice for successfully engaging in this space.
1. Master the Basics
First things first: you have to make an account and familiarize yourself with the platform. Before you can be a content creator, you need to be a content consumer. Begin by scrolling down your For You Page, a feed of videos tailored to each user based on the videos they interact with on the app. Follow nonprofit accounts with missions similar to yours.
Look out for trends. Trends on the platform can be popular audios, such as a clip from a trending song or show, a dance move, or a filter. On TikTok, these trends are fast-paced and rapidly changing, so the use of the app on a frequent basis is crucial. How else would you know that the “renegade” dance is your number one way to connect with a new donor?
While you get your bearings, it is important to remember that TikTok is distinct from other platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. TikTok allows you to shoot a microvlog within the app, using filters, audio clips, and captioning to stand out. Filters include classic blog editing such as black-and-white or other color-changing effects. TikTok also has interactive filters where users can reply to comments on-screen, add text, or other interactive components. Captions allow for users to add trending hashtags corresponding to current trends, such as #GivingSeason. Mastering each of these TikTok features will set you apart and allow you to reach your audience in a more meaningful way.
Nonprofits to follow on TikTok: @unitedway, a large nonprofit organization focused on bettering the common good, amassed a large following during the pandemic. By combining educational topics with popular songs and trends, the organization has gained over 500k likes.
2. Gen Z
Zoomers dominate TikTok, we all know this. While Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are busy catering to the masses, TikTok has forged a lane all its own. This is good news for you and your nonprofit because it means you have a direct line to the next generation. It’s true that Gen Z doesn’t have deep pockets at the moment, but they are the most engaged and educated generation we’ve ever seen. Your teenage viewership today is your donor base tomorrow. It is vital that your social media strategy always keep in mind who that audience is and why they matter so much.
Operationalizing this is a simple HR decision: you need someone on your staff who exclusively manages your TikTok account. You need to invest in a social media coordinator. This may be a hard sell for some, if not most, nonprofits who are constantly confronted with limited resources and growing needs. That’s fine, work with what you have. Recruit an intern or find someone on staff who has the capacity for a creative project like this.
What is important to remember is that TikTok is a platform that changes quickly and it is easy to get left behind. In order to reach this young audience, you have to play the game, and to play the game well you have to know how it works. A skilled social media manager can fully understand your mission and repackage it for this new audience, fundamentally changing and progressing what your community of support looks like for years to come.
Nonprofits to follow: @itgetsbetter uses its account to educate youth about mental health and uplift the LGBTQ+ community. They keep their microvlogs upbeat and short with music, pictures, and dancing to communicate a powerful message in a way that their audience understands and wants to engage with. Young people also serve as the face of this account to help promote peer-to-peer messaging.
3. Don’t Bury the Lede
TikTok parameters dictate that you have a maximum of three minutes per microvlog. Use these minutes wisely. As soon as your microvlog plays on someone’s feed, it should be immediately apparent to them who you are and what you stand for. If you fail to grab their attention, users will have no problem scrolling on to something else. TikTok is a market for attention and the competition is cutthroat.
Be clear. Be concise. Be engaging. Try using trending audio and overlaid captioning to quickly get to the point and grab the viewer’s attention. Leverage those in-app features like buttons and filters to keep your content fresh and relevant. Consider a content posting schedule. Posting on a daily basis, at a scheduled time, can provide structure to the account and ensure that you build a long-lasting relationship with the viewer.
Nonprofits to follow: @catskillanimalsanctuary, a farm animal sanctuary in the Catskill Mountains, mastered audience connection by pairing lighthearted audios with videos of their animals to build an online community through laughter and kindness.
4. Curate Your For You Page to Study Your Stakeholders
Your For You Page is indeed for you but there is also something to be learned here beyond what kind of cat videos you prefer. TikTok’s algorithm creates this page by aggregating your viewer history and determining what you like and anticipating what you’d want next. As content creators, we can use this information to our advantage in order to grow our audience. Look at accounts that are similar to yours, study the content they produce and find new and interesting ways to replicate it. By modeling your content after another account, you are, in essence, pairing your account with the other. The algorithm will determine you have similar content and will push your page into new stakeholders’ feeds. There is no denying that the algorithm runs TikTok, so use that to your advantage rather than being at the mercy of it.
This same principle can also be done in reverse. Instead of manufacturing an affiliation between you and another account for a tailored user base, you can also leverage the For You page to gain a broader audience. Periodically, post a video that isn’t cause-specific but rather fun and relevant. This could be a dancing trend as opposed to posting an informational microvlog detailing the organization’s mission. The more views your posts get, the more likely they will appear on a wider reach of users’ For You Pages.
Nonprofits to follow: @guardianangelsmsd, a nonprofit that trains and matches service dogs with individuals with medical needs, appeals to a general audience by posting playful puppy videos. They also tailor content to animal and disability activists by detailing their service dog training strategies.
5. Prioritize Authenticity Over Branding
TikTok is unique in that promoting personal authenticity is of far greater importance to the viewers than promoting a traditional brand. Accomplishing authenticity requires you to first know yourself. What does your organization stand for? What do you want to be known by? And then consider how you can present that by being the most authentic, real, and raw version of yourself possible.
TikTok’s users are savvy about marketing strategies. Polished, branded content will not gain user engagement, nor will recycled posts from other platforms. Create original content that invites people into the life of your nonprofit and shows them why your work has an impact.
Nonprofits to follow: @aceengel, director of Pet Angel Adoption in Michigan, uses her platform to bring viewers behind the scenes of a cat rescue. Her personable voice and unique perspective are the focal points of the account as she educates and engages her nearly 200k audience.
6. Verification
Gaining that little blue checkmark by your TikTok handle to show your verification does not demonstrate the success of your nonprofit. Rather, it demonstrates the success of your TikTok account. Becoming “verified” is a professional tell, indicating trustworthiness and almost guaranteeing improved reach. Strategies to become verified include: (1) an increase of followers daily, (3) growing watch time (including increasing views and watch times), (3) having viral content, (4) being featured in other media, and (5) being verified on other social media platforms. Nonprofits shared with us that verification helped increase followers and allowed them to work directly with TikTok.
But success can be achieved without verification, and verification may even come with some downsides. Limited access to features, like the use of certain sound clips, were reported by some nonprofits once they were verified. Being verified is not the only way to get a large number of followers, some nonprofits are not verified, yet have over a million followers. Even if you never become verified, incorporating some of the strategies to achieve verification can help with your success on the platform.
Nonprofits to Follow: @ApexWolves, a small nonprofit wolf rescue in California, has a verified account that showcases their wolves alongside TikTok trends for their 1.5 million followers.
7. Community Building is Key
All social media content on TikTok can be categorized as community building, information sharing, and/or inspiring stakeholders to take action. Community building, however, is key. By this we mean that all content should be produced with some aspect of the TikTok community in mind. In order to educate or inspire action, you must first engage with your audience through platform trends. Community building operates as a prerequisite for other types of content.And when you produce microvlogs with a community-building lens, your user engagement (views, likes, shares) increases.
Think about your own account and what kind of content you want to create. If you want to share information, do it with a trending dance. If you want to utilize the donation sticker, use a trending audio clip. Speaking the language (e.g. trends) allows you to build digital rapport. Once established, this rapport allows for a give and take between you and viewers; you provide opportunities for education and action, and the viewers feel compelled to answer the call.
Nonprofits to follow: @plan.international, a humanitarian organization that works to advance children’s rights and equality for girls, combines trending dances with powerful messaging in overlaid text to cultivate a community of support.
8. Things are different here
While community building is the essence of TikTok, it is important to consider how your content and presence on the platform relate to your mission and organizational goals. Nonprofits may be focused on gaining followers or likes, increasing financial and in-kind donations, or furthering their organizational goals. But it is important to understand how to translate followers and likes into donations and organizational goal achievement. Incorporating your social media goals on TikTok with your organizational goals is something you can do no matter how sophisticated your strategy.
Your approach to this platform in terms of mission should be different than for other social media platforms. For example, Gen Z may not be your current donors, but they are potential future donors. TikTok serves as an opportunity to share your brand and mission with a new generation and to plant a seed to give in the future, when Gen Z is earning a larger income.
Nonprofits to follow: @artsphere, a youth arts program in Philadelphia, mastered service provision via TikTok during the pandemic by translating their programming into video-format micro art lessons for their followers isolated at home.
Conclusion: Just do it!
What are you waiting for? TikTok has few barriers to entry. Like other social media platforms, there is no cost to join. However, knowing your audience and learning the platform requires time. Hiring a Gen Z social media coordinator may reduce learning costs but anyone can find success in the TikTok community. Gen Z is not the only generation on the platform. (Add Pew research on Millennials, Gen Z, and Baby Boomers on the site.) Many nonprofit directors with whom we spoke were responsible for the nonprofit accounts and these leaders tended not to be from Gen Z.
Innovation is cheap on TikTok. The platform’s short microvlogs allow nonprofits to speak directly to stakeholders in innovative ways. The video-production tools turn a novice into a videographer overnight. Hundreds of filters, thousands of audio clips, and easy-to-use video editing tools can make your social media coordinator look like a professional! Be flexible in your approach in order to respond to emerging trends. Verbal interaction builds community quickly, and in turn, user engagement. One off-the-cuff, authentic post can go viral and gain the account thousands of followers and likes.
¹ The authors examined 1160 TikToks from 58 accounts belonging to U.S-based 501(c)3 nonprofits posted July 2021-March 2022. The team interviewed 29 account managers across 24 states with follower counts ranging from less than 1,000 to over 1 million. Read more about the research design: Wiley, K., Schwoerer, K., Richardson, M., & Espinosa, M. B. (2022). Engaging stakeholders on TikTok: A multi-level social media analysis of nonprofit Microvlogging. Public Administration, 0(0), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12851
