Unlinking TikTok For Business: Why And How To Do It

There are two types of TikTok accounts: personal and business.

Most TikTok users have personal accounts on the social media platform. Those who are promoting their companies, small businesses, or brands, however, often switch to (or add) business accounts.

Understanding TikTok Business Accounts

These accounts provide many benefits for business owners and operators, including the ability to show company email addresses and links to company websites on the account’s TikTok profile page, access to the app’s commercial music library, and expanded TikTok analytic metrics that aren’t available to personal account owners.

There’s one more important benefit to having a business account: it allows you to sign up for a separate app called “TikTok for Business.” In that app, companies have access to additional content creation tools, the TikTok Ads Manager, a hub for managing marketing activities and expanding an account’s reach, and a number of extra e-commerce features.

Smart marketers interested in expanding their TikTok presence establish business accounts and then add TikTok for Business.

You can easily change your account from a personal one to a business one in your TikTok settings, but many users take a different route. They create a new business account and then link it to their personal account. That lets them continue interacting with existing friends and followers, while also managing their businesses without needing two different logins.

Linking TikTok accounts can be extremely convenient, but it can also cause a big problem: what happens if a business owner sells their company to someone else?

It’s against TikTok’s terms and conditions to transfer ownership of the regular business account, but who gets “custody” of the TikTok for Business account?

In most cases, it’s either abandoned or transferred to the new owner. That means there’s some work to do.

How To Unlink Your TikTok for Business and Business Accounts

If the TikTok for Business account is just going to “go away,” there are two ways to get it done.

From TikTok for Business:

1. Log in to TikTok for Business and visit your “Settings” page.
2. Tap “Personal Info.”
3. In the right-hand column, tap “Unlink TikTok account.”
4. You’ll be asked to supply your email address so a confirmation code can be sent.
5. When you receive the code, enter it in the proper field.
6. Click “Confirm” on the popup, and TikTok for Business will be unlinked from your business account. (Important: Doing this will also remove access to any TikTok Shop you operate.)

From the TikTok app:

1. Visit your profile by tapping the icon at the bottom right of your home screen.
2. Click the Menu icon (three horizontal lines) at the top right of your profile page.
3. From the popup window that appears, choose “Settings and privacy.”
4. Select “Security and permissions.”
5. Scroll down and click on “Apps and services permissions.”
6. Select “TikTok for Business” and tap “Remove access.”

Whichever method you use, you’re now able to add access from your business TikTok account to a different TikTok for Business account, if you have another company or decide to open one later on.

It gets more complicated if you want to switch ownership of your TikTok for Business account to the entity that bought your business. Don’t unlink TikTok and TikTok for Business; instead, add the new owner as an admin to the TikTok for Business account and give them all available permissions. They can then remove you as a member once the deal is complete.

Once that’s done, you can unlink the two accounts in your TikTok app.

The smartest approach, though, is to speak with a TikTok Ads manager to get their advice before changing any permissions or unlinking accounts. They can advise you on the best way to accomplish the transfer without breaking any of the platform’s rules.