Adweek Social Media Director Sami Lambert on How To Achieve B2B TikTok Success

[Editor’s note: Prior to joining Mission North six years ago, the author was Adweek’s technology editor. Additionally, screenshots featured in the above graphic are sourced from Adweek's TikTok page.]

Sami Lambert has been in social media marketing since interning for Viacom in 2014 when she was wrapping up a degree in sociology, communication, and media studies from SUNY Geneseo. In the last couple of years, Lambert’s been part of Adweek’s social team and was elevated to social media director in February.
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Over the years, Adweek has built a robust presence on Facebook (618K followers), Instagram (528K followers), and X/Twitter (690K followers), but other business-to-business publishers have performed similarly well on those platforms. What Adweek and Lambert recently accomplished as a B2B brand on TikTok, though, bears closer examination, attracting 128K followers, which greatly outpaces other marketing publications—none of which have more than a few thousand followers.
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“My former colleague, ​​Jess Zafarris, deserves credit for building up Adweek’s TikTok audience,” Lambert explained. “She had a great series of weekly roundups of all this fun marketing news, and she put her face on it and talked from her point of view.” 

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With Lambert at the social media helm for Adweek’s tentpole marketing conference (Brandweek) in September, her small production team quickly pieced together a TikTok video that garnered nearly 3 million views.
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Lambert is in London this week for Adweek’s Social Media Week Europe conference, hunting for the next buzzy social media clip for her employer. Before she jumped on the plane, we caught up with the New Yorker to uncover what other B2B brands can learn from Adweek’s TikTok success. Our interview was edited for length. 

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Your recent TikTok viral video from the Brandweek green room featured an interview with  “Scrubs” and [T-Mobile TV commercial] stars Donald Faison and Zach Braff. What were the keys to the post’s success?

First of all, it obviously had recognizable talent. Faison and Braff actually sang and danced to a trending TikTok from influencer Madeline Argy (@madz) before they got on stage. So, we asked them about it because we knew the answers would be good. Once that moment was captured, we got to play with an existing trending TikTok meme, and then we remixed it.

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Why did that strike a chord with TikTok users?

Because Faison and Braff were referencing something that the TikTok community knew about. Another reason it did really well is because Adweek became part of a wave of people who have used [Argy’s] original video as a jumping-off point for new videos. We put ourselves in a greater conversation on TikTok, specifically. The same video posted on, say, LinkedIn, wouldn't do as well because people wouldn’t be as familiar with what these two stars were talking about.

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Did you plan your TikTok hit?

It was last minute—we had many other videos planned. Faison and Braff just happened to be dancing and singing to the TikTok song in the green room. It wasn't like that concept was prepped months before. For a lot of viral videos, there's only so much planning you can do and a lot of it happens on a whim.

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What can other B2B marketers learn from this effort?

TikTok is its own beast. But that goes for every social platform—Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitch, etc. And that’s why a lot of companies get it wrong. It's hard to find someone who speaks every platform's language or knows the perfect content for each.‍

<split-lines>"TikTok is its own beast."<split-lines>‍

Are there rules for tagging TikTok influencers that B2B marketers should know about?

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It's always important to tag the original TikTok user to give them credit for the video. So, @madz was tagged in the original video, and we put [Argy's] face in our video. And among the remixes of her video, we were referencing the one by a DJ (Tazi), and we tagged him in the comments on TikTok and Instagram. He commented back and said, “Oh my God, this is crazy.” So, the rule is to always tag for credit and for extra exposure to the TikTok community.

<split-lines>"It's always important to tag the original TikTok user to give them credit for the video."<split-lines>

How did you cut your TikTok teeth?

Before joining Adweek, I helped start Inked Magazine's TikTok page and built it up to around 1.7 million followers before I left. So I got in the rhythm of making interview-style TikTok videos. 

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If you were starting a B2B TikTok page today, what would you do after opening the account?

Get familiar with the platform! Follow 20 brands and 20 creators, spend an hour a day watching videos, like/comment on relevant videos to teach the algorithm in order to create a magical FYP (For You Page). And identify a host or face of your company who can appear in TikTok videos. They can interview people, jump on trends, lip sync to popular sounds, answer questions, etc.

<split-lines>"Follow 20 brands and 20 creators, spend an hour a day watching videos, like/comment on relevant videos to teach the algorithm in order to create a magical FYP (For You Page)."<split-lines>

Beyond perhaps lip-syncing to popular TikTok sounds, what can B2B marketers do on the app that they cannot do on other social platforms?

You can put a human face to your B2B brand. So if you're running your own B2B TikTok page, you must choose someone with a knack for TikTok. People also want to see other people using trending TikTok sounds and videos, even if they are from a B2B page. Trending TikTok sounds can be really helpful if you're doing it right. If you don't do it right, it could be cringey, and the audience will see right through you. It's not going to work.

<split-lines>"If you're running your own B2B TikTok page, you must choose someone with a knack for TikTok."<split-lines>

Are there any other “don’ts” for TikTok marketing?

Don't force yourself to try to jump on trends if they do not actually apply to your brand or are funny or relatable. Simply using certain audio or a cut as a template doesn't guarantee success in any way. Sometimes brands just jump on everything because they think they have to. But you don't have to, and you actually should not.