Recently, it was announced that the popular social media app TikTok is being banned in the United States. While its final fate isn’t entirely determined (the company has been given 45 days to either close or be bought by others), the disruption is worrying for many brands that may have customized content offerings currently on the platform.

What can brands, businesses and content creators alike do to help ensure their TikTok content survives in the event the app is truly banned in the US? Let’s take a quick look at some actions you can take to secure that content for the future.

Download Individual Videos

For brands and businesses that have select videos that are customized, there may be no need to preserve every single video on your account. After all, if some videos are already uploaded to other social media networks like Instagram and YouTube, their existence isn’t being threatened.

For content that is truly unique, however, opening your TikTok app provides an easy way to download individual options. All you’ll need to do is open a video, select the “…” icon and select “Save Video” to back it up. Each video you select this option for will be downloaded to your phone or mobile device, thereby guaranteeing it can be uploaded elsewhere at a later date.

Download Everything

While you may not need to backup every video on TikTok, there is a one-size-fits-all option that allows for a download of all videos on the app. In order to access this feature, you’ll need to go into your settings and navigate to “Personalization and data”. From here, there is an option to download your data in one major file.

However, it is very important to note that these requests are processed by TikTok directly and can take up to one month to be processed. You’ll need to keep checking back in the app to see if a download link has been provided after initiating the request. Given TikTok only has about one month of guaranteed existence left (as of the time this was written), using this option as quickly as possible is paramount.

While TikTok is undoubtedly pinging links to many data downloads at this point, their current policy still applies: each link only remains active for 96 hours, so there’s also a short window in which to download the data.

Alternatives for Hosting Your Videos

Where can brands and businesses re-upload their content in the coming weeks and months for sharing? Are there any new alternative platforms on the horizon that may enjoy the same level of popularity as TikTok?

Recent reports say that YouTube is currently testing out a TikTok-like short video app for both Android and Apple devices. Even now and as a placeholder, uploading your custom TikTok videos to YouTube can ensure their safety until a new alternative is found.

Platforms like Dubsmash has been around for quite some time and is also gaining traction in the post-ban announcement atmosphere.

Just because TikTok may be leaving the US doesn’t mean your videos have to leave with it. While pinging links to these clips from other platforms may not be as seamless and the unique nature of TikTok itself may be lost, brands and businesses can easily download some or all of their current videos in order to ensure they won’t be lost if the ban actually occurs.