Should your Australian small business be on TikTok?

TikTok can bring a small business a lot of attention at a low cost. It can also eat hours with nothing to show for it. Whether it suits you comes down to your customers and what you can show on camera.

Good signs

Your product or work looks interesting on video: food, renovations, beauty, fitness, retail or before-and-after results.
Your customers are adults under about 45, although older audiences are growing too.
Someone in your business is comfortable on camera, or you have customers who are happy to appear.

Warning signs

You sell mainly to a small number of large businesses. LinkedIn may be a better use of your time.
Your customers need urgent help and search on Google when they do, as with emergency plumbing. Local SEO should come first.
Your main market is under 16. Australia’s social media minimum age law means platforms including TikTok must take reasonable steps to stop under-16s having accounts.

What to post

Forget the dances, unless that’s you. These formats work for most businesses:

Answer one customer question in under 30 seconds.
Show the process: how something is made, fixed or packed.
Before and after: with the customer’s permission.
Busting myths in your industry.
A day in the business: real people and real work.

Where AI helps, and where it doesn’t

AI is good for turning one idea into many hooks, drafting scripts, adding captions and cutting a long video into short clips.

Be more careful with AI avatars and fully AI-made footage. They can work for explainers, but real people usually build more trust. Check the platform’s rules too, as TikTok requires some AI-generated content to be labelled.

Advertising rules still apply

If you post a sponsored or paid testimonial, make it clear. Australian Consumer Law applies to social media, including claims you make in videos.

A simple 30-day test

Post three short videos a week for a month, and reuse them on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Then look at more than views: profile visits, website clicks and enquiries. If people who could actually buy from you are responding, keep going.