The Table Tyke, a baby-safe placement mat that helps prevent children from hitting their faces on the edge of tables, is the invention of Berlyn Haughton of Fresno. The product has gained a significant following through TikTok. Image via Facebook

In today’s digital age, to be in business you have to be online — in some way or another.

Businesses — large and small, local and international — have made it a point to establish and maintain websites for their businesses for decades now, but the online landscape has grown.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more recently TikTok have become popular online venues for well-known businesses and new entrepreneurs to advertise, create brand awareness, connect with customers, reach more potential customers and keep their business relevant.

Just this year alone, 91.9% of U.S. marketers in companies larger than 100 employees were expected to use social media for marketing purposes, according to an August report from the Statista Research Department.

In 2019, social media marketing spending exceeded $17 billion in the U.S., an almost $10 billion increase when compared to numbers from 2014.

With so many people online, and with 54% of social media users using social media to research products, according to GlobalWebIndex, businesses should utilize these online opportunities.

Locally, there are example of those who have gotten attention to their business or product by going viral with just a few posts.

Chelsea Soares, Realtor and owner of The Soares Team real estate agency in Fresno, has created multiple Reels on Instagram — a feature that allows users to create short videos that could be displayed as a post on the feed that have garnered millions of views.

Through nudging from the creative team at Prem PR & Social marketing agency to make Reels, Soares said there was a learning process for Instagram, even though she has teenagers herself.

Soares had done television interviews and other advertising activities, but social media brought way more attention.

Soares said she produced a Reel that did not have much production effort put into it, but was going for a more casual and organic feel that at first got a lot of attention, but after some weeks, received over 10 million views.

“I don’t know if Instagram is where people to go to look for homes, but it’s where people go to connect with other people. It’s another avenue to be able to showcase your business. The benefit of social media is that you’re not limited to that—it’s a chance to showcase our marriage, family, and what we like to do in our personal lives. It helps us build a more intimate relationship with would be customers,” Soares said.

Though the real estate industry locally wasn’t restricted for too long during the pandemic, Soares said, the pandemic did force a lot of businesses to delve into the online side of marketing, and those that were hesitant to do so before made it a priority.

Since Instagram has metrics easily available to its users, Soares said she is able to track things like when her posts get the most interactions to be able to pick the best times to post.

Since the viral post, there has been more attention to The Soares Team, and Soares said such a surge can happen with a single post.

For their social media presences, she advises entrepreneurs to not worry about making things perfect, but more about being authentic and showing their real selves to the world.

“They say in our industry that it only takes one right buyer or one right offer to make you, and it’s true on social media as well. That particular video just happened to be the one that catapulted us into this next level,” Soares said.

With its short-form content style and surging popularity, TikTok has become another popular platform for small businesses as well as major brands and companies.

Fresno based Berlyn Haughton, inventor of The Table Tyke, a baby-safe placement mat that helps prevent children from hitting their faces on the edge of tables, and to prevent teething babies from sucking on dirty surfaces, gained a significant following through TikTok.

Along with her day job in managing projects for AT&T corporate, and her job as a mother of two boys ages 6 and 3, she got the idea for the Table Tyke two years ago over a lunch date with her mother.

Starting at around the age of 6 months, babies are beginning to sit up and start teething, and constantly hit their mouths on table edges. Haughton remembered how her and her husband would have to have their arms across the table edge to keep them safe.

“I thought, ‘why is there place mat that has solved this problem’?”, Haughton said. “I looked high and low for a placemat that had a bumper on the table edge — it didn’t exist. There was no mat on the market that had a bumper.”

It was also important that the product be designed to be carried on the go.

After finessing the product with a research and design company, she got connected to a manufacturer from a friend and then she was in busines.

Haughton had posted some videos on TikTok that had performed “okay,” she said, but then decided to post a simple video about why she created The Table Tyke. She posted the video and didn’t think anything of it.

The next morning, she had 20 new orders, which was a big leap for her at the time. She assumed she got the attention from an Instagram post, but was then being notified by friends that they had seen her TikTok video.

The post had received over 100,000 views overnight. Within three to four days, she had hundreds of orders and the video had half a million views.

Haughton said she makes TikToks frequently — and that about every tenth post goes viral.

“TikTok has been a huge help in getting exposure to my businesses outside the local area, and shipping across the nation, and even internationally at this point,” Haughton said.

She has about 3,000 followers on TikTok, but about 70,000 likes. Her most viral post currently has about 625,000 views.

Since first releasing the Table Tyke in October 2020, over 1000 mats have been sold. She just placed her single largest order from her manufacturer — about 1,000 mats.

Haughton said there are requests for wholesale, and she is working on getting on the Amazon market and into more ad-space.

“It seems like the [TIkTok] algorithm is there to get you more exposure far and wide across the platform. I found more success in utilizing TikTok,” Haughton said.