TikTok has launched a new education program for marketers called ‘TikTok Academy’, which provided free video courses on how to make best use of TikTok for marketing, along with research data and other information to expand your understanding of the app.

As explained by TikTok:

“Through TikTok Academy, we aim to provide robust learning opportunities to help teams become TikTok-savvy marketers by providing not just the “how-tos” of TikTok but also the key insights that will enable media and creative excellence on the platform. We know the TikTok community loves engaging with their favorite brands, so we want to deliver the tools and expertise to maintain this unique and engaging experience.”

So much like Meta’s Blueprint courses, and Twitter’s ‘Flight School’, TikTok Academy aims to provide marketers with key lessons to help them optimize their campaigns, while also providing more in-depth notes on usage trends and behavioral shifts that are important to understand in a TikTok context.

To begin, users sign-up to TikTok Academy with a verified email, which will then enable you to explore the courses on offer in the platform.

As you can see, at present, there are only two courses on offer – ‘TikTok 101’ and ‘Small Business’. There’s also a ‘Commerce’ course coming soon as part of the initial set of Academy offerings.

Course times are variable – ‘TikTok 101’, for example, takes between 2-4 hours to complete, while ‘Small Business’ can be completed in around an hour. Though you can probably skim through each faster – but of course, the point is that you want to take in the lessons, in order to better understand how you can maximize your TikTok marketing efforts.

When you sign up for a course, you’re first presented with an overview plan, so that you understand the full scope of what you’ll learn in each element.

You’re then taken through a series of videos on each element, followed by quick questions to test your knowledge.

Which, for experienced marketers, are pretty easy:

They get harder as you go, of course, but most of the questions are fairly obvious – but again, the point is to take in the learnings, not speed-run them (which I did for this report).

At the end of each module you get a token to recognize your enhanced TikTok knowledge, with badges awarded for the completion of each whole course.

You can then display those badges on your website, or list your TikTok Academy certifications on your LinkedIn profile, helping to underline your understanding of TikTok marketing.

I mean, the real skill in TikTok marketing is understanding key trends, and aligning your content with the other videos in user feeds, in order to keep people engaged, and there’s no course that can give you that insight. That comes down to your own nous and capacity, and the time you spend in the app, but the overviews here will help to improve our technical understanding of how to apply such to improve the performance of your TikTok ads.

And there are some good pointers here, some key notes that you may have overlooked or missed in the past.

As such, if you are serious about maximizing TikTok your marketing efforts, then it’s worth undertaking the courses on offer, and getting your own course badges to display to your friends and clients.

You can sign-up to begin your TikTok Academy education here.