Sprout Social Influencer Marketing is a badged TikTok Marketing Partner and has exclusive access to their Creator Marketplace API. Thanks to this, we are excited to offer you a very simple way to ensure that your creators' TikTok posts are always Branded!
Using TikTok Branded Content is the only official way to run your influencer marketing campaigns on TikTok. If you're interested in the details and profits of using this feature, read more in Benefits of using TikTok Branded Content.
How does it work?
The simplest path to creating TikTok Branded Content is to provide your creators with special URLs called "TikTok Invite Links". Creators can simply click on the link and upload up to 10 videos in a dedicated experience created by the TikTok team.
An alternative path is to generate shortcodes called "TikTok Campaign Codes" - creators need to manually paste the code into their TikTok mobile app. This path is recommended only if Creator was not able to use the Invite Link and their post is already live (see "Alternative: Using Campaign Codes" section below).
In both cases, you have to send the appropriate information to the creator and the creator is required to perform an action on their side.
To sum up, creating TikTok Branded Content with Sprout Social Influencer Marketing is a very simple, two-step process:
Let's go through both of them!
Before May 2023, it was required to authenticate an ad account to leverage the integration with TikTok Creator Marketplace. This is no longer needed. Simply add TikTok Creators to your Campaign and begin outreach!
Step 1: Send the Invite Link
Within your campaign, select a creator that you want to cooperate with and send a message with Invite Link to the creator:
Each influencer in a campaign gets a unique link that can be used only by them. Clicking the Invite Link will not work if the Creator is logged in to an incorrect TikTok account (different than the one that the Link has been generated for).
If you've planned TikTok drafts, Sprout Social Influencer Marketing will suggest sending the code right after you hire the creator.
And lastly, invite links also work for creators that are not yet part of the Creator Marketplace!
We strongly advise against including any giveaways, log-in rewards, or similar content in branded posts, as it goes against TikTok policies on fraud and scams. Mentioning such content poses a risk of banning a creator's account permanently after a number of violations.
Step 2: Creator clicks the link and uploads the video
Once you send the link to the creator, your part of the flow is done - now it's the creator's turn! They have to click on the Invite Link and proceed with the process that's outlined there by TikTok.
The flow on the creator's side is very simple - once they click the link, they are redirected to TikTok's app and they only have to:
approve the terms and conditions of using TikTok Creator Marketplace
upload their video
And that's it! The "Branded Content" toggle becomes automatically turned on in their app.
If you've already established the partnership between you and the Creator in this Campaign, the flow of linking additional posts will be different. For more information please scroll down to "Adding more posts within the same Campaign"
If you believe that your creators could use extra support in this process, feel free to send them our TikTok Branded Content - a guide for creators article.
Alternative: using the Campaign Codes
If a creator has already posted their piece of content but for some reason, they haven't used the Invite Link, they can still transform this video into Branded Content using a TikTok Campaign Code.
In order to generate this code, you have to:
Go to the campaign and choose the creator that you want to send a link to.
Open the details of the "Connections" box by clicking "View".
Send Campaign Code to Creator.
Once the creator receives the code, they have to:
Press the three dots icon in the bottom right corner, find "Ad settings"
Click on "Branded content and ads" tab and toggle "Branded content"
Click on "Add campaign code" at the bottom of the page
Paste the received Campaign Code and click "Agree and Continue"
Close the "Link Campaign" box and save all the changes
Here is how it looks!
If you believe that your creators could use extra support in this process, feel free to send them our TikTok Branded Content - a guide for creators article.
Adding more posts within the same Campaign
After establishing the partnership with a Creator using either an Invite Link or a Campaign Code, the flow of adding more posts into the same partnership is different.
If the piece of content already exists, the Creator has to:
Go to the piece of content
Press the three dots icon in the bottom right corner, find "Ad settings"
Enable Disclose post content, choose the "Branded content" option
Click "Select" in the "Brand partnership" section
Choose the appropriate partnership and press "Link campaign"
Wait a little bit for TikTok's confirmation and press "Confirm"
Save the changes
If the piece of content doesn't exist yet, the Creator has to:
Create the piece of content as they would normally
Go to Content disclosure and ads
Enable Disclose post content, choose the "Branded content" option
Click "Select" in the "Brand partnership" section
Choose the appropriate partnership and press "Link campaign"
Wait a little bit for TikTok's confirmation and press "Confirm"
Publish the piece of content
Scaling the experience
For Campaigns with a large number of TikTok creators, you can also send Invite Link and Campaign Codes for all of them at once.
Go to the campaign and choose the Creators you want to message.
Choose the appropriate message template:
"TTCM Invite Link", for use cases when you want to send the link to the creator for future content,
"TTCM Creator Code", for use cases when you want to send the code to the creator to retroactively add to existing content.
Finally, send the message!