It can be hard to keep up with what’s trending on TikTok. The good news is, the platform released a new report that details leading trends, including what’s been hot in beauty and personal care.

TikTok For Business looks at platform performance during the past year (October 2020 to October 2021), analyzing hashtags as an indicator of performance. 

According to the report, nearly every beauty and personal care trend in 2021 revolved around self-care in some shape or form—from products as simple as toothpaste to trendy taped eyebrows.

Among the beauty and personal care industry's wide range of categories, haircare was a particular bright spot, according to TikTok’s report. In fact, in 2021 #hairtok rocketed to the top of the beauty sector with a 20,000% increase in video views and a 3,000% boost in videos created.

Come-as-you-are self-acceptance informed the style of this year's beauty and personal care content, according to TikTok’s report. The platform says many beauty and personal care TikTokers veered away from glossy veneers of perfection in their content last year to reveal more of the messy, real and relatable.

And, as those who spend any time on the platform can attest, TikTokers love process, not just the end results. Routines and transformations resulted in stand-out engagement, according to TikTok. It said both #grwm (get ready with me) and #beforeandafter are big hashtags for beauty content on the platform.

Popular & Rising Posts

Determined by volume, these were popular posts in beauty in 2021:

#selfcare (Video Views: 3.4B)
#transformation (Video Views: 6.3B)
#blackgirlmagic (Video Views: 1B+)
#asmr (Video Views: 2.1B+)
#oddlysatisfying (Video Views: 7.5B+)

According to TikTok, the fastest-growing hashtags of the year in beauty and personal care are:

#grwm (Video Views: 2.7B+)
#dermdoctor (Video Views: 1.7B+)
#lashes (Video Views: 1.6B+)
#nailart (Video Views: 2.2B)
#momsoftiktok (Video Views: 3B)

In its report, TikTok outlined a success story for skincare brand Peter Thomas Roth.



A user (Trinidad Sandoval) posted a “simple, honest, direct-to-camera review” of the Peter Thomas Roth Instant FIRMx Eye Temporary Eye Tightener. In one week, the post garnered 23 million likes, thousands of comments and plenty of reactions. The eye product sold out repeatedly on the brand's site as well as third-party sites for weeks! The brand reportedly sold about six months' worth of product in six weeks because of TikTok, according to a statement in the report from PTR Founder and CEO Peter Thomas Roth.  TikTok says the brand rolled out a jumbo size of the product and is planning to boost that user’s video once organic traffic wanes.

Tips for Brands

TikTok has dished out tips for creating TikTok campaign, including:

• Before-and-after reveals get people excited to try a product themselves (and then post their own results). Direct response auction campaigns can be especially helpful here, allowing TikTok users to purchase the product immediately at scale, with trackable results.

• Lean into the genuine come-as-you-are vibe by showing more of yourselves, with content that goes behind the scenes at your company, or highlights the care and ethical values that your products are made with. Spark Ads let you test a variety of your organic posts as paid ads, and a TikTok brand lift study can help you quantify how posts like these affect the community's perception of your overall brand, said TikTok.

• Beauty and personal care brands can draw attention to a product by calling out a “self-love” moment that their product could create for someone's day. Collection Ads allow users to show multiple facets of an idea in different formats, helping consumers move directly from product discovery to purchase in just one sitting. To maximize results, consider collaborating with a creator who can showcase the product in use in existing self-care routines.

Buying In

As of December 2021, #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt amassed more than 7.4 billion views, according to the platform’s own reporting. Now, TikTokers can buy what they see. Last year, TikTok rolled out a suite of e-commerce solutions for brands and merchants.

With TikTok Shopping, the platform offers a full-service commerce solution and brands can also tap into shopping with third party providers that partner with the platform.

For example, TikTok said Glow Recipe was an early adopter of its Shopify solutions. After the company’s Watermelon Glow Drops went viral on the platform, the company turned to TikTok, and with Shopify it set up shop on TikTok by integrating its product catalog into a new shopping tab on its business profile.

“Our presence on TikTok has continued to grow rapidly after we went viral, so adding the shopping tab as part of the experience and being able to tag our products within videos is the perfect way to maximize the consumer journey and guide them to learn more about the products on our website. We are excited to see more customers use this new in-app experience, and to continue to partner with TikTok and Shopify on social commerce programs,” Mallory Goldberg, senior director of marketing, Glow Recipe, said in a statement provided to TikTok.

The TikTok for Business report can be accessed here.