Our Point of View on the Latest Buzzing Social Platform

 

TikTok has become the hottest new social media platform. With 800 million users worldwide TikTok is providing a new way to connect. The app initially grew a large teen user base but has quickly grown with the number of adult users growing 5X in less than 18 months. This growth has only continued with people having more time on their hands through the COVID-19 quarantines (27% increase in the first 23 days of March compared to February’s 6.2 million downloads).

With the exponential growth that it has experienced recently it makes it a valuable platform for brands to be able to reach their audiences in a new way.

What Can You Do on TikTok

• Watch & Create Videos: Videos are central to the TikTok experience. They can be uploaded or created in-app with stop and start recording, timers, and other tools. Live streaming is also an option. Users can add visual filters, time effects, split screens, green screens, transitions, stickers, GIFs, emoji, and much more.
• Add Music: TikTok’s extensive music library and integration with Apple Music is where the app edges out all other social platforms. Creators can add, remix, save, and discover songs and sounds via playlists, videos, and more.
• Interact: TikTok users can follow accounts they like, and give hearts, gifts, comments or shares on videos they enjoy. Videos, hashtags, sounds, and effects can be added to a user’s Favorites section.
• Discover: The Discover feed is all about hashtags, but users can also search for keywords, users, videos, and sound effects. People can add friends by searching their username, or scanning their unique TikCode.
• Explore: TikTok profiles show atally of follows and followers, as well as an overall total of the number of hearts a user has received. As on Twitter and Instagram, official accounts are given blue checkmarks.
• Spend Virtual Coins: Coins can be used to give Virtual Gifts on TikTok. When a user buys them, they can convert them into diamonds or emoji. Diamonds can be exchanged for cash.

On TikTok, content is king and it’s all about entertainment. Anyone can make a video about anything they think will entertain a viewer. These are some of the most popular types of content being created right now:

• Challenges: Typically involve a popular song or hashtag. Trending songs and tags like #ButHaveYouSeen and #HowToAdult act as prompts for users to attempt dance moves or create their own variation on a theme.
• Duets: Duets are a popular collaborative feature on TikTok that allows users to sample another person’s video and add themselves to it. Duets can range from genuine collabs, remixes, spoofs, and more. Artists like Lizzo, Camila Cabello, and Tove Lohave used the format to promo singles and connect with fans.
• Cringe Videos: These videos aim to make audiences cringe with painfully awkward performances and scenarios. Often funny and always embarrassing, they’re the type you can’t look away from. That’s why they often end up in YouTube compilations.
• Reaction Videos: YouTubers pioneered the reaction genre, but TikTokers have perfected it. Under the share option of someone’s video, users can select React. They can record their reaction while the video plays, and position where they want their overlay video to play alongside the original.

All of this content doesn’t just stay on TikTok either. In many cases, users share their content on other social networks like Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Instagram. Integration for sharing on these apps and others is built in. There are currently more than 32 million posts with the hashtag #TikTok on Instagram. In many cases, captions can add a new layer to an already existing TikTok meme.

Advertising on TikTok*

Advertising on TikTok is continuing to expand as the platform becomes more established. These are currently the core advertising methods:

• Sponsored Hashtag Challenges: Brands can create sponsored Hashtag Challenges. With Hashtag Challenge ads, your challenge will have a unique banner within the TikTok Discover page that drives users to a challenge page featuring instructions for the challenge and existing content using that hashtag.
• Brand Takeover / Topview: Brand Takeover ads can be still images, GIFs and videos. The ad can be linked to a brand’s landing page or a Hashtag Challenge within TikTok, and these takeovers are exclusive to categories each day – so only one brand can takeover acategory each day.
• In-Feed Native Video: Videos in TikTok last up-to 15-seconds, and In-Feed Native Video ads must be between 9-15 seconds in length. The ads are full-screen (much like Instagram Stories ads) and skippable. This ad-type also supports multiple objectives such as app downloads and website clicks.
• Branded Effects: Much like Snapchat and Facebook’s AR lenses, a lens on TikTok will be available for a set amount of time (up-to 10 days) and will be featured in key spots throughout the app.

Advertising Considerations

Because TikTok is just beginning their entry into in-app advertising, there are elements to remain aware of if and when considering spending money on this social media channel.

• Targeting: Right now, audience targeting capabilities are limited. While the platform continues to grow, the targeting capabilities will too. Geo-targeting only narrows in to the state level and interest targeting is fairly broad (for example, we can target ‘Health and Wellness’, but ‘Food’ interest targeting isn’t available yet).
• CTAs: Opportunities that advertisers have for call to action on TikTok include: “Download Now,” “Learn More,” “Shop Now,” “Sign Up,” “Contact Us,” “Apply Now,” and “Book Now.”
• Goals: Ad content on TikTok should be Awareness/Reach focused, they are startingto introduce more CTA options, which signals that they are working on ways to make this more of a brand direct-response friendly platform. Due to the nature of the platform and the content created for it, campaigns should be strategized with high awareness and engagement objectives in mind with low expectations of ROI.

Get in touch with us to learn if the platform is right for you or see what other media channels your business should be prioritizing.

 

*Since this article was written changes in government policy have been made that affect advertising on this channel.