BY BONNIE LAXTON-BLINKHORN, KINDICARE

6 DECEMBER, 2022

Social media is an effective and fast way to connect with audiences and while many early learning services are well versed in the ways of Facebook and Instagram, TikTok is another kettle of fish! 

According to their website, TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video, with a mission to ‘inspire creativity and bring joy’.

The app is currently available in 154 countries and in August 2022 had 1 billion active users per month, this is predicted to increase to 1.8 billion by the end of this year.      

TikTok evolved from Musical.ly, a social networking app that enabled ‘musers’ to create and share music and 15 second videos of themselves lip-synching or dancing. The 15 second limit was increased to 60 seconds and in July 2021 it was extended again to 3 minutes.

TikTok is now reported to be testing 10-minute videos.

The expanded timeframes have greatly increased the usefulness of the app as a platform for marketing and communication and it can now be used as a way of sharing observations from your early learning service, advertising for staff, showcasing premises and connecting with your community. 

TikTok Tips for Newbies

If you’re completely new to TikTok and wondering where to start, the best place is the app itself.

Download TikTok, sign up and spend some time familiarising yourself with how it works, you can use the search bar to look up the names of early learning services and hashtags such as #ECE #earlyeducation #earlychildhoodeducator to find and watch content.

While some of the clips that appear in your feed may be a bit left of centre at first, TikTok algorithms are effective, and the app will soon learn what you want to watch. The more you engage with content, the faster it will learn.

The reassuring thing about watching TikTok content is that you’ll fast come to realise it doesn’t need to be slick or professional to be effective.  Authentic videos that capture the voice of a person or organisation resonate well with audiences, no matter how home-made they look.

The message here is, don’t let a lack of tech skills put you off!

Engaging with your audience is the primary goal of TikTok, so it’s important to have a very clear idea who your target audience is.

The team at Story House Early Learning are using TikTok to reach educators and promote job vacancies. While at Goodstart Early Learning in Fortitude Valley, Director Sienna Mifsud is creating TikToks to connect with enrolled families, peers and the wider community.

Goodstart social media and content specialist, Jessica Lunney, said in addition to Fortitude Valley, a number of Goodstart services nationwide have downloaded TikTok and are currently exploring ways to create content.

Jess says, Goodstart is excited to see how they can best represent themselves, and the Australian early learning sector, on TikTok and are in the early stages of planning.

“Goodstart is passionate about amplifying the importance of early learning and the impact that attending a high-quality service can have on setting a child up for success; TikTok as a channel has the power to echo that message globally which is really exciting.”

Jess is currently working with a number of centres to identifying how she can support each centre in their own TikTok journey.

All Goodstart services maintain their own Facebook page and can choose to have a profile on Instagram. TikTok is the same.

When starting your TikTok journey, and social media in general, Jess says it’s important to address confidentially as your first priority. Safeguarding the privacy and confidentially of all children and educators is a non-negotiable for all ECEC teams. 

“TikTok is fresh and exciting, and like other channels, content is centre-led, this is because each Goodstart centre is deeply connected to its community, understanding what’s suitable and what will resonate.

“However, we’re working on guidance and support mechanisms that centres can lean on and we ask that they discuss their plans with us before launch,” says Jess.

Over at Story House Early Learning the team is using TikTok to communicate with potential new recruits by demonstrating that frontline employees are surrounded by passionate teams who support employees to be their best self.

“We want to give potential new Story House-ers a genuine look into what it would be like for them to work for us. We also wanted to give our Story House-ers an outlet to connect, laugh and be creative as a team creating TikTok content,” said Talent Acquisition Manager Kelly Murphy.

20 minutes on TikTok and you’ll quickly realise that people post videos on absolutely everything and plenty of other people watch those videos.

This makes it a useful tool for promoting the benefits of early learning, sharing children’s experiences and showcasing the unique aspects of a service and its educators, however, with so much content out there it can be hard to know where to start.

Jess says planning is essential and it helps to develop key content pillars to ensure your efforts on TikTok and social media more widely have purpose and direction.

“It’s when you don’t have a plan and try a bit of everything that content creation can become overwhelming and feel too hard.”

Who are you talking to?

Essential to the effectiveness of all communications is a clear understanding of your audience and this will partly be informed by the objectives of your content strategy.

TikTok skews young with 70 percent of users aged 39 years or younger and Jess says it’s important to be authentic and use realistic narratives when ‘speaking’ to this demographic.

“TikTok as a channel allows centres to showcase their unique approach to learning to their own community, as well as globally. From a talent perspective TikTok is a fun and exciting way to demonstrate the important and incredibly valuable work early childhood educators do every day, helping to shift the perspective from ‘babysitters’ to respected professionals.”

Kelly at Story House Early learning says their decision to engage with TikTok was based on an understanding of their market and current workforce and how best to reach them.  

“70% of our workforce is Gen Y or Gen Z and we have taken a strategic approach to reaching our market by using TikTok. We have tried to create content that elicits thoughts and feelings with the aim of developing a psychological connection with the viewer right from the start,” she said.

Remember, with the incredible  reach  of TikTok comes a range of potential risks, especially when it comes to safeguarding the privacy of children, families and educators.

It is essential to gain the permission of anyone you hope to use in a TikTok video, before publishing it, and to be mindful of the reputational harm that can be caused by videos that go wrong.

As a TikTok newbie it might be safest to keep children out of your videos completely and focus on making videos which feature willing educators and elements of your service.

Check out #TeachersofTikTok for a bit of inspiration.  

Tackling the TikTok algorithm:

Working with the TikTok algorithm, which like all social media platforms, is changed frequently, will increase the effectiveness of your clips and their reach.

While practise makes perfect the suggestions below will increase the chances of your clips being seen by the right people:

• Use short well-written captions with your videos.
• Harness the power of hashtags to make your content easier to find.
• Use trending music, backgrounds and effects.
• Create content that speaks to your audience and reflects the character of your service and the people who work there.
• Follow and engage with other educators, services and early learning organisations on TikTok.
• Be strategic with timing, social media scheduling platforms like HootSuite help with this and when you get serious TikTok for Business includes analytics tools that provides this information. As a rule of thumb try these times for posting, as recommended by Influencer Marketing Hub: Monday: 6am, 10am, 10pm Tuesday: 2am, 4am, 9am Wednesday: 7am, 8am, 11pm Thursday: 9am, 12am, 7pm, Friday: 5am, 1pm, 3 pm, Saturday: 11am, 7pm, 8pm and Sunday: 7am, 8am, 4pm.

 

Jess said she would encourage early education and care services to give TikTok a go, describing it as an ‘emerging way to share your brand’s personality’ and she says once the logistical and privacy considerations around permissions are organised the main points to remember are:   

• Child, educator and family confidentially and privacy is your number one priority
• Do your research
• Create a content plan
• Ditch the polish and be more informal and authentic
• Inject humour and entertainment appropriately

 

Kelly at Story House says TikTok has been an effective tool to gain engagement with current team members and gives them a real point of difference in the talent space.

“We have reached almost half a million viewers and have been able to successfully showcase our culture, resulting in a significant increase in applications and website views driven via TikTok.”

For services considering establishing a presence on TikTok Kelly advises services to, “Be genuine and purposeful in the content you are making.”

Good luck!