TikTok Best Practices

TikTok Best Practices

TikTok is an entertainment platform for quick, digestible and fun videos. The UC Davis TikTok is run by UC Davis students to reach current and prospective students. Our content depicts relatable student life content and recaps of campus events.

Consider your relevance.

Before diving headfirst into the commitment of creating a TikTok account, consider the relevance that your team or organization has to the platform. Can you create fun and engaging content designed for a younger audience? Do you have the capacity to create, produce and edit 2-3 videos a week? If so, TikTok may be a good platform for you.

Be trendy.

If you don’t have a personal TikTok account, creating one may be helpful in finding popular trends that can translate to your brand. TikTok is a popular app where audios, dances, editing styles, etc. go viral which prompts users to chime in. Hopping on viral trends can help grow your audience and viewership as the premises of your content are already established, you’re simply building on top of it.

Highlight your communities.

Because you’ll need a lot of content featuring people on TikTok, be sure to be diverse and represent all kinds of communities. This makes the content more engaging and relatable for everyone.

Editing on TikTok.

TikTok is an easy-to-use platform for video editing. When creating a video, make sure to not use filters that decrease the quality of the video. When repurposing the video on a different platform, be sure to screen record the video without text on the video and then re-add it on the platform you are repurposing on (Instagram Reels, for example). It’s also a good practice to save a copies of the video without text as you’re editing in case the app crashes. Therefore, you don’t have to start over from scratch.

TikTok features:

  • Editor - the TikTok editor is similar to iMovie and easy to use. You can edit individual clips through the editor including adding sound, text, overlay and effects. If you decide you want to add these effects to the video as a whole you can just do that on the main editing screen.
  • Text - Adding text to TikTok is easy and you can change the duration that you want the text to appear. Be sure to know the margins for TikTok as you don’t want your text to be cut off.
  • Music - Adding music to TikToks is highly encouraged as it always enhances your video. On TikTok, trends typically revolve around music choices. If you hop on trends, be sure to use the coordinating audio clips that are part of the trend (and only participate in the trend if the music is appropriate).
  • Audio - TikTok allows for voiceover features. If you include music as well, adjust the music so that it does not drown out the voiceover. It should complement the voiceover in the background.
  • Captions - Adding captions to your video is important. The most accessible way is through the auto-captions feature on the app, but if you use this feature, be sure to edit the captions if the auto-generation does not match the actual audio.
  • Stickers - You can add stickers to your TikToks such as mentions, hashtags and polls (these features are similar to Instagram Stories), however use them appropriately and to follow a trend. 
  • Photo mode - This feature flips through images that you select. You can add photos and edit them individually like video clips on a video TikTok. 

Post Copy.

Keep the copy on TikTok short and sweet (or snarky). This platform should have the shortest copy by far. Be sure to follow the copy text with a few relevant and popular hashtags about the university or even the trend itself.

TikTok Accessibility Best Practices

When posting on TikTok, key accessibility areas to consider are: graphics, video captioning, video description and post copy. 

Graphics: General guidelines

Captioning: General guidelines

  • TikTok offers closed captions that are auto-generated by the platform which users can turn on and off. The auto-generated captions recognize video speech but not song lyrics or TikTok audios, so make sure to burn song lyrics and audios into your video.
    • Use the text and timeline feature to include song lyric captions.
    • Write "cc:" (closed captions) before the first line.
  • Be sure to edit the auto-generated captions for accuracy or type all captions manually yourself: example

Video description: General guidelines

  • Include a video description in your post copy. It does not need to be separated by a line break.
  • Remember to include a flashing imagery warning at the top of your post copy if necessary.

Post copy: General guidelines 

More resources: TikTok Help