<div class="gn-article"><div class="gn-hero gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-hero__image"><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6877701b88030d58f11ac053/6a16dbd862fd6355e57812e2_resource-playbook-banner-68ac85983c130319941422.webp" alt=""></div> <div class="gn-hero__head"> <span class="gn-kicker"><span class="dot"></span>Expression</span> <h1 class="gn-title"><em>Playback:</em> TikTok &amp; Emerging Social Platforms: How Your Brand Can Get Involved</h1> <div class="gn-meta"> <strong>The GO Network</strong> <span class="pip"></span> <span>2 September 2025</span> <span class="pip"></span> <span>1 min read</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gn-body"> <h2>TikTok and Emerging Social Platforms: What Agencies Need to Know Right Now</h2> <p>For many agencies, TikTok still sits in the "we should probably do something about that" pile. Yet the platform has fundamentally shifted how audiences discover brands, consume content, and make purchase decisions. Alongside TikTok, a wave of newer and evolving platforms is forcing agencies to rethink how they advise clients on social strategy, allocate creative resource, and demonstrate measurable value.</p> <p>The GO Network's Expression series brought together two specialists to cut through the noise: <strong>Grace Warren</strong>, Social and Influencer Lead at <a href="https://ponderosa.agency/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Ponderosa Agency</a>, and <strong>Chloe Johnston</strong>, Creative Brand Partnerships Director at <a href="https://thisisround.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Round.</a> What follows are the core takeaways from that session, framed for agency teams looking to sharpen their social offer and win more confidence from clients.</p> <h2>Why Agencies Can No Longer Treat TikTok as Optional</h2> <p>TikTok is no longer a youth platform with niche appeal. It has matured into a full-funnel channel with genuine reach across age groups, categories, and purchase journeys. For agencies, this creates both an opportunity and a credibility risk. Clients are increasingly asking pointed questions about TikTok strategy, and agencies that cannot answer them with confidence are losing ground to those that can.</p> <p>The platform's algorithm operates very differently from Meta or Google. Reach is not primarily determined by follower count or paid spend. It is driven by content quality, watch time, and engagement signals. This changes the creative brief entirely. High-production assets built for broadcast or display often underperform natively produced, lo-fi content that feels authentic to the platform's culture. Agencies that understand this distinction, and can brief and produce accordingly, are far better placed to deliver results and retain client trust.</p> <p>Beyond TikTok itself, agencies should be watching how the broader social landscape is fragmenting. Platforms are competing aggressively for creator attention and brand spend, which means formats, tools, and audience behaviours are shifting faster than annual strategy reviews can capture. Building an internal practice that monitors these shifts as a matter of routine, rather than reacting to them, is increasingly a competitive differentiator.</p> <h2>Building an Audience Versus Driving Conversions: Getting the Balance Right</h2> <p>One of the most common tensions agencies navigate with clients on social is the gap between brand-building activity and performance-oriented conversion work. TikTok in particular is often miscategorised as a top-of-funnel awareness channel only, when in practice its in-app shopping features, affiliate tools, and direct-response formats make it a viable conversion driver for the right categories.</p> <p>The practical implication for agency teams is that the objective needs to be set clearly before the strategy is built. Trying to do both simultaneously, without separating measurement frameworks, leads to confused reporting and eroded client confidence. A session focused on audience growth should be evaluated on follower quality, retention, and share of voice. A conversion-focused campaign needs attribution clarity and a defined cost-per-action benchmark.</p> <p>Influencer and creator partnerships add another layer of complexity here. Grace Warren's work at Ponderosa Agency reflects a growing reality: the relationship between organic social, paid amplification, and influencer content is no longer linear. Agencies that can map these interactions clearly, and show clients how each element contributes to the overall objective, are the ones building more durable commercial relationships.</p> <h2>Practical Steps for Agency Teams</h2> <p>Drawing from the session, here are concrete actions agency-side teams can take to strengthen their social platform offer:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Audit your current social capability honestly.</strong> Identify where your team has genuine platform fluency versus surface-level familiarity. TikTok content strategy, creator sourcing, and native production are distinct skills. Know which you have in-house and which you need to bring in or develop.</li> <li><strong>Separate audience-building briefs from conversion briefs.</strong> Do not let clients conflate the two. Set distinct KPIs for each workstream from the outset, and make sure your reporting reflects those distinctions clearly.</li> <li><strong>Build a platform monitoring habit.</strong> Assign someone in your team to track format changes, algorithm updates, and emerging platform features on a monthly basis. This does not need to be a full-time role, but it does need to be someone's explicit responsibility.</li> <li><strong>Use creator partnerships strategically, not reactively.</strong> Influencer and brand partnership work, as Chloe Johnston's role at Round. demonstrates, is increasingly a specialist discipline. If your agency is offering this as a service, invest in the process rigor to make it repeatable and measurable rather than ad hoc.</li> <li><strong>Lead client education proactively.</strong> Clients who understand the platform are easier to work with and more likely to fund the right approach. Build short, practical briefing materials that explain how TikTok's algorithm works, why native content outperforms repurposed assets, and what realistic outcomes look like at different budget levels.</li> </ul> <h2>The Bigger Picture for Agencies</h2> <p>Social platform strategy is not a standalone service. It connects directly to how agencies position their creative offer, how they structure client retainers, and how they demonstrate ongoing value. As platforms like TikTok continue to evolve and new entrants compete for attention and spend, agencies that build genuine platform expertise, rather than generalist social management, will be better placed to command stronger fees and deepen client relationships.</p> <p>The Expression series from The GO Network is designed to help agencies build exactly this kind of practical, commercially relevant knowledge. All playbacks are free for The GO Network members. If your team is working through how to evolve its social offer, reviewing this session in full is a useful starting point.</p> </div></div> <aside class="gn-related gn-reveal" data-auto="related-reading"> <div class="gn-related__label">Related reading</div> <ul class="gn-related__list"> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/tiktok-emerging-social-platforms-how-your-brand-can-get-involved" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">TikTok &amp; Emerging Social Platforms: How Your Brand Can Get Involved</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Experts from Ponderosa and Round cover paid vs. organic reach, trend-driven content, and the pitfalls to avoid when moving clients into new </span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/playback-crisis-comms-in-2025-are-you-prepared-for-the-unexpected" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Playback: Crisis Comms in 2025: Are You Prepared for the Unexpected?</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Watch agency experts cover risk anticipation, multi-channel crisis management, and turning brand incidents into trust-building wins. 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