Public Services Quarterly

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wpsq20

Getting started with TikTok for library marketing

Rob Stephens

To cite this article: Rob Stephens (2022) Getting started with TikTok for library marketing, Public
Services Quarterly, 18:1, 59-64, DOI: 10.1080/15228959.2021.2008286

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15228959.2021.2008286

Published online: 30 Mar 2022.

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PUBLIC SERVICES QUARTERLY
2022, VOL. 18, NO. 1, 59–64
https://doi.org/10.1080/15228959.2021.2008286

MARKETING COLUMN
Katy Kelly, Column Editor

COLUMN DESCRIPTION The PSQ Marketing Column features essays about a variety of creative
and innovative marketing strategies used to highlight collections or promote services in all types
of libraries. Its purpose is to provide real examples of how libraries are using marketing and out-
reach techniques in interesting ways. The column offers practical insight from libraries engaged
with marketing. In addition to marketing, the column also features essays on successful programs
and events that promote the library.

Getting started with TikTok for library marketing

Rob Stephens
Research & Instruction Librarian and Outreach Coordinator, Nicholls State University, Thibodaux,
LA, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Many libraries are turning to rapidly-growing social media app TikTok TikTok; social media;
to marketing their services, but joining can be intimidating and a lot academic library; Nicholls
of work. Nicholls Library has used the app to promote their services State University
on campus, gaining recognition among students, but not without
clear goals and expectations. In this column, the social media chair at
Nicholls Library discusses strategies for getting started with TikTok.

When I started my job as Research & Instruction Librarian and Outreach Coordinator
at Nicholls Library in 2020, I had never watched a single TikTok, much less made a
TikTok video. Part of my responsibility, however, was to chair the social media commit-
tee and use social media to promote the library’s services. My supervisor suggested that
we look into TikTok as a method of reaching more students, since anecdotally we heard
that college students were using the app. I downloaded TikTok, created one account for
our academic library and one for myself, and started learning.
Two years later TikTok, where we use the handle @nichollslibrary, has become essen-
tial to Nicholls Library’s marketing identity. Students have stopped me on campus to
tell me they’ve seen me on TikTok, a student came to the library to checkout a laptop
and told us they didn’t know we had laptops items until they saw our videos promoting
them, and a friend of mine who lives out of town told me he met a Nicholls student
who recognized me from the app. In fact, as I was composing this article, the custodian
walked into my office and told me he loved my latest TikTok Tuesday video.
TikTok is an incredibly powerful tool for libraries of all compositions to market their
services. In September 2021, TikTok hit one billion monthly active users, a feat it
achieved faster than many of its competitors, including Facebook and YouTube

CONTACT Rob Stephens rob.stephens@nicholls.edu Research & Instruction Librarian and Outreach Coordinator,
Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, LA 70310, USA
Comments and suggestions should be sent to the Column Editor: Katy Kelly kkelly2@udayton.edu Coordinator of
Marketing and Engagement, University of Dayton, 300 College Park, Dayton, OH 45469-1360.
ß 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
60 R. STEPHENS

(Dellatto, 2021). Libraries and nonprofits are quickly turning to the platform to create
content that may appeal both to their individual patrons or to TikTok users interested
in literacy, libraries, or reading.
It may seem overwhelming to try to reach out to a billion users or to try to go viral
on TikTok, but what I have found is that, like other social media sites, the tools avail-
able on TikTok can make getting attention locally easier. And it all starts with a consist-
ent marketing plan and reasonable goals for using the app. Before I discuss how to
create a plan and goals, I want to illustrate the power of TikTok for marketing.

The power of the for you page and hopping on trends

When I created a TikTok account, I had no clue how to post, what to post, or how
often to post. For example, TikTok videos are filmed in portrait mode, and the first
video I did was landscape. I didn’t understand stitching, dueting, the trends and chal-
lenges, or what music to use. To learn more about TikTok, I started a personal account
and began watching and creating content there to learn.
One thing that confused me about TikTok at first is that many videos used the hash-
tag #fyp. What I’ve come to learn is that “fyp” is short for the “for you page.” This
page is the default landing place for users watching videos, and TikTok curates content
it thinks will be interesting to each specific user. As the user gives TikTok more infor-
mation based on their demographic, what content they watch, what content they skip,
and what videos they like or comment on, their fyp becomes more tailored to
their tastes.
What’s powerful about the fyp is that when students or Nicholls community mem-
bers are on TikTok, they may organically encounter videos by our library. If a user
allows TikTok to identify their location and/or give the app their age, the app will rec-
ognize that they are likely to be interested in content from Nicholls. Alternatively, if a
user likes content from other libraries or campus organizations, they will be more likely
to see our content.
It’s important to think of the fyp not only from the perspective of getting patrons to
view content from a library, but also in terms of how to mold your own fyp to interact
with other accounts. When a library starts on TikTok, they should find other organiza-
tions related to them (such as other campus or local organizations) and libraries to fol-
low. Doing this will provide them with a near endless amount of content that they can
watch, interact with, and even copy in the form of trends.
As I was learning the app, I noticed that there was a trend going around of people
dancing to the song “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd. The dance was relatively easy
and my daughters enjoyed it, so I made a video of us doing the dance. When the video
garnered over three thousand views, I started to understand the power of TikTok
trends. Part of the joy of TikTok is repetition with small variation. Users will see videos
that other people post and then create their own versions of that trend. Viewers take
joy watching the funny or impressive iterations of different trends. Even though I’m not
a great dancer, people enjoyed watching me give the dance an honest go with
my daughters.
 PUBLIC SERVICES QUARTERLY 61

Therefore, I think the way to get started with TikTok is to download the app, start
following libraries, librarians, writers, and other people in the library and book space,
then use their content to copy or for inspiration. In fact, we often find that videos that
get the most views are the ones where we hop on a trend or interact with other
accounts. Once I recognized the power of trends, I made a duet video (or a video that
appears next to the original) with the Nicholls State University main account. On their
account they posted a video of a student worker doing the Renegade dance, which is a
fairly complicated dance. I (poorly) learned the dance, went into the back of the library
and filmed it. The juxtaposition of the two dances was ridiculous, and the video was
viewed several hundred times on all of our social media platforms.
If there are no dancers in your library, fear not—there are tons of trends that don’t
include dancing. For example, there was a trend called “The Rasputin Challenge” where
people would show off impressive things to the song “Rasputin” by Boney M. We
noticed that some libraries were showing off their biggest and smallest books using the
song. I filmed a TikTok of one of our students showing off our tiniest and biggest book
to the song, and it was a big success with hundreds of views across platforms. Libraries
are constantly posting and coming up with new trends that are sometimes unique to
libraries and other times variations on mainstream trends. And don’t worry—it’s not
only acceptable but expected that users will copy, remix, and reuse content from others
on TikTok.
By creating content that interacts with or copies other accounts or trends, you are
more likely to get your content noticed, as it seems that TikTok’s algorithm favors this
sort of content. And that means that you are more likely to land on user’s fyp.

TikTok as a video creation tool for other social media

While the TikTok platform is an excellent place to post content, get followers, and
interact with other libraries, it is also an easy place to create content that can be shared
on other platforms. Instagram and Facebook have started their own competitor to
TikTok called Reels where users can post short videos. We have seen incredible success
posting our TikTok content to Instagram Reels, especially because we’ve had Instagram
for several years before getting TikTok, so we have a much larger following and estab-
lished presence on the site. In fact, I’ve had a video that got under a hundred views on
TikTok get over three thousand on Instagram Reels.
I’ve found that although Reels is growing into its own unique platform, the site
started as a place where people would mostly repost their TikTok videos. This is ultim-
ately useful to users of both sites, as it can be a way to promote both your TikTok and
Instagram accounts because TikTok videos are imprinted with the TikTok logo and the
username of the video’s creator. Moreover, I’ve found that many Instagram users are
already familiar with TikTok trends because of the migration of videos from one plat-
form to the next, so they enjoy content that comes from the original site.
Another strategy that we have implemented is creating live content through
Instagram or Facebook, then reposting the videos to TikTok. For example, for a library
fundraiser we pied our library director live on Facebook. We then saved that video,
added a popular TikTok song to it, and posted it to TikTok and Instagram afterward.
62 R. STEPHENS

The video performed well on both those sites and helped us gain visibility for our fund-
raising efforts.
Another reason that we use TikTok to create content for the other platforms is the
availability of music and video effects on TikTok. TikTok makes it easy to find trending
music or sounds and then add them to a video, and some trends require filters that are
specific to TikTok.

TikTok Tuesday as a “newsletter”

Every year we are fortunate to have students from marketing classes at Nicholls do a
case study on our marketing endeavors and give us tips for improvement. In 2020, stu-
dents commented that while they felt our social media was good, they thought we could
improve by featuring more people in our videos. They noted that they enjoyed a seg-
ment that another campus organization did on Snapchat where a student gave weekly
updates about their life at Nicholls. They said they enjoyed seeing the familiar face every
week. Moreover, previous to adopting TikTok, librarians at Nicholls tried to create a
weekly email newsletter to update the Nicholls community about our services and
events. For a number of reasons, that newsletter never came to fruition.
Based on the marketing students’ feedback and our desire to create a newsletter, we
decided to create a weekly video on TikTok called TikTok Tuesday that would feature
different services every week as well as some light library humor. We also made the
decision that I would be the host of TikTok Tuesday so that students would begin to
recognize me and associate me with the library. To make this content, I collaborate
with other librarians, student workers, and my supervisor to create a 30-second to one-
minute videos. I have a fixed format for the videos that I typically stick to: the video
starts with a cold open, I talk about three or four of our services, and I end by featuring
an e-book from our collection.
Lately something that we’ve seen success with is having an organization outside the
library “takeover” our TikTok Tuesday. For example, we recently had our esports team,
Colonel Esports, perform such a takeover. We started our cold open with a video of me
gaming in their esports lounge, then switched back and forth between library services
that had to do with gaming and highlights of their esports lounge and team members.
The president of Colonel Esports hosted the video and encouraged his team members
to share the video on their social media. The resulting cross-promotion was great
because it reached students who may not have otherwise known about TikTok Tuesday
or certain library services.
The series has proven to be a huge hit—not on TikTok at large, where the videos get
usually between 100 and 200 views, but often on our other social media they perform
better, with one TikTok Tuesday getting close to four thousand views. When I talk
about “local” marketing, this is what I mean—because our content is more likely to be
seen on the fyp of users interested in content similar to ours, Nicholls Students often
see it. Not every video makes a splash in the incredibly large pool of TikTok, but every
video is viewed hundreds of times across platforms, and students have commented that
they look for TikTok Tuesday every week.
 PUBLIC SERVICES QUARTERLY 63

Creating a TikTok strategy and goals

A first encounter with TikTok can feel intimidating. There are millions of incredibly tal-
ented individuals on the app making an inconsumable amount of content. But getting
started on the app can be manageable, and the first thing to do is download the app
and start watching content to understand TikTok better. TikTok has a portal that you
can find in the “creator tools” section of the settings where other creators post how-to
videos on topics such as “TikTok content strategy,” “TikTok creation essentials,” and
“Foundations for success.” This portal is a great place to start learning about success on
the app.
Next, make sure to start conversations and plans with coworkers about how the
library will use the app. The first issue to consider is who will be involved in managing
the TikTok account. It is best to have at least two people working on social media to
ensure that the content is quality, consistent, and in line with your library’s goals and
messaging. My library director, who enjoys social media and is a member of our social
media committee, reviews almost every video that I make for the app and frequently
corrects small design issues or encourages me to refilm segments when they could be
better. I also bounce ideas off her to make sure they send the message that we want our
audience to hear, and she frequently sends me TikTok ideas that she sees while con-
suming social media.
It is very important to set a regimented posting schedule on TikTok; this can be chal-
lenging, as it is also very time consuming to make high quality videos. TikTok suggests
that users post daily to achieve maximum benefit, but we have found that untenable for
our library. We post twice a week as a minimum, but more if we have time, and we
make sure that we never miss a TikTok Tuesday. Some libraries plan and film all their
TikToks during one day of the week, then post them as the week moves on. Still other
libraries may find it easiest to have two people responsible for posting on different days
of the week. The most important thing is to create a plan with clear expectations as to
who is doing the work and when.
Having both abstract and concrete goals for your TikTok is essential to success on
the app. By “abstract” goals, I mean goals that may not be measurable but are still
important; for example, an abstract goal for the Nicholls Library was to increase our
visibility on campus. Concrete goals can help you to measure how the abstract goal is
going. For example, our goal is to see monthly increases in followers and likes on the
app, so we keep track of our follower numbers, our likes, and our most successful vid-
eos. While we would certainly enjoy it if one of our videos went viral, it is not our goal;
what’s more important for Nicholls Library is that Nicholls students, faculty, and com-
munity become more aware of the services we have. A larger library may want to try to
make a bigger splash than that.
One thing that I regret not saying until now is that while TikTok is a lot of work, it
is also incredibly fun. It is rewarding to publish videos and have students directly react
to them. It was a blast when I wrote a song about Nicholls Library’s giving day and had
my coworkers dance to it. And it is most rewarding when I see a student checking out
a book because they saw it on our TikTok.
64 R. STEPHENS

Notes on contributor
Rob Stephens is the Research & Instruction Librarian and Outreach Coordinator at the Nicholls
Library. He lives in Thibodaux, Louisiana with his wife and three kids. You can follow Nicholls
Library on TikTok at @nichollslibrary.

Reference
Dellatto, M. (2021). TikTok Hits 1 Billion monthly active users. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/
sites/marisadellatto/2021/09/27/tiktok-hits-1-billion-monthly-active-users/?sh=64ad28fe44b6