Behind the Scenes: Panel With TikTok Creators
Before entering the Q&A portion of the panel discussion, we opened with the common debate: “content creator” or “influencer” — which term is preferred and why?
Kwame shared that in the past, only a select few content creators were actually called “influencers.” These influencers had a very specific look: curated Instagram feeds, large followings, and perfect captions. But, that’s changed.
Here’s Kwame’s take on what makes an influencer:
“Nowadays, anybody can pick up their phone and create content. And so everybody likes the term ‘content creator’ or ‘creator’ because it’s so inclusive. Now that we all have the power to create — we all have the power to influence.”
We believe that brand marketers should focus on creators with influence. But regardless of your approach, both influencers and content creators can provide brands with powerful content.
What Do Creators Look For In Brand Partnerships?
Aligning On What Success Looks Like
Melissa Desm — who has 251K followers on TikTok — feels that regardless of your geography post impressions — engagement reigns supreme.
“I think the most important thing to every brand is engagement. You can have millions of views, but if you don’t have any likes or shares, it’s kind of useless to the brand. So I think engagement is number one and I think that’s the case no matter where you live.” – Melissa
Authentic Brand Connections
The #1 thing creators Mathis and Alexis St-Laurent look for in brand partnerships. Authentic brand connection.
“I think it’s important to have the same vision as the brand you work with because if you make a video and you don’t have the same vision as the brand, it’s not [effective].” – Alexis
A Trusting Relationship
Beauty, fashion, and lifestyle creator, Ayem of @ayem_beauty on TikTok, shared that trust is vital to any partnership with a brand.
“For me it’s when a brand trusts me. For example, when the brief is not super structured and they share the key messages but ultimately give me creative freedom. Just trust your creator because they know what their community is looking for.” – Ayem
Creative Freedom
Alongside trust, Melissa Desm feels like brands must allow for creative freedom. We all know that TikTok users are well versed in spotting ads, disclosure hashtags aside. So it’s important for brands to ensure content from their creator partners is unique. After all, creators know their audience best.
“Send key messaging to us but don’t put us in this tight little box.” – Melissa Desm
As a Quebec creator, one successful partnership for Melissa was when she worked on a co-branded campaign between food delivery company SkipTheDishes and the Montréal Canadiens hockey team. The collaboration involved a giveaway where everyone who placed an order on SkipTheDishes using her code would be entered to win a VIP package with the Canadiens — seats, meet and greet, plus dinner for two.
Tons of her followers ordered through SkipTheDishes, the Montréal Canadiens got a marketing boost, plus Melissa’s audience in Québec was excited for this rare opportunity to participate in a giveaway (since Québec residents are frequently excluded from marketing giveaways in terms and conditions). All in all, a perfect example of a win-win-win scenario for all parties.
Creating Authentic Content for French Canadians
TikTok Best Practices
When it comes to the French Canadian audience on TikTok, here’s what our creators had to say:
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Alexis St-Laurent feels like comedy videos resonate best with his audience, particularly collaboration videos with other creators, whereas Mathias focuses on creating point-of-view content.
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Melissa creates a lot of humor-based content based on the typical personality traits of French Canadians.
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For Ayem, her followers respond well to realistic beauty content that’s not overly edited.
Regardless of your content strategy and accompanying language, optimizing your videos with keywords and creating more original content can go a long way to getting more video views on TikTok.
French or English: What Works Best?
Not sure what language your branded content should be in? Creators from the event agreed that creating content in French is important if you want to resonate with French Canadians (vs assuming that the audience is bilingual).
Brands should also consider that Montréal is very bilingual (English and French), whereas most of Québec is French-speaking only.
Therefore, depending on a creator’s target audience, creators have to be very strict when it comes to including English words in TikTok videos. Ayem creates her content in French but is looking into translating some into English to attract a larger following.
With this in mind, Alexis always creates videos in French given his 400K+ followers are primarily based throughout Québec. However, he wants to expand to other parts of Canada and the U.S. so he’s also posting content without any voice-over or talking. In comparison, his brother Mathis will sometimes create videos with English overlays so that he can reach a larger audience.
