You've probably heard about TikTok in passing but perhaps if you're reading this you never particularly payed any active attention to it. However you've been hearing about the platform more and more via various news sites and other mediums discussing how popular it is with a certain demographic.
Whether or not you subscribe to the hype, TikTok could become the next Instagram or Snapchat. According to various reports, TikTok boasts of over 500 million active users across the world and the US inclusive of that.
Understanding TikTok as a Social Media Platform
Indeed, there is a resurgence of developmental changes in the world of social media applications available in the market and one of the tools categorized as “the next big thing” is the TikTok platform.
Tiktok, formerly referred to as Musical.ly is a social media platform that is used for creating, distributing, and discovering short music videos. The app is mainly utilized by the largest demographic that companies hope to reach, young people, as a means of expressing themselves through some fun activities such as dancing, singing, lip-syncing, and comedy.
The app has gone by a different name, and it's parent company was acquired and it's current iteration is the app commonly referred to as TikTok. With an entirely new logo, this app offers similar features to musical.ly. Apart from that, it also provides users the opportunity to create videos recorded in a short period, usually 15 seconds or less and share them across a wide range of communities within the platform.
Similar to other stories format of other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp and so forth, the content that is being shared on TikTok is vertically oriented, and the visual layers are inclusive.
Originally, TikTok was launched in 2016 under the Chinese name “Douyin.” Since that time, it has grown to become one of the most popular social media platform all across US even after it merged with the popular app Musica.ly in 2017.
Many of the elements featured in the TikTok application includes music, communities, and trending issues. Many of the posts shared on this platform are centered around hashtags, humor, and discovery of creative ways to present videos. These and more are a few of the things that are mostly appreciated by users of current TikTok platform.
Who is using TikTok?
The TikTok application has more than 500 million global users across over 150 countries of the world. In the first half of the year 2018, TikTok rose into the limelight while also becoming the world’s most downloaded application on Apple’s app store. The app boasts an estimated 140 million downloads surpassing downloads of other social media platforms such as YouTube, Whatsapp, and Instagram within that same period.
As reported by Iresearch Index in October 2018, TikTok recorded a total of 51.76% males and 48.24% females in the demographic breakdown. Furthermore, this report also revealed the age distribution of users. Statistics showed that globally users under the age of 35 accounted for 26.3%, users between age 31-35 accounted for 28.8%, and users between the age of 25 and 30 accounted for 27.91%.
Is TikTok Good for Business Advertising?
Currently, one of the challenges with this platform is the absence of advertising framework or methods of monetization. With this, users are provided with a more relaxed as well as enjoyable experience. However, this doesn’t imply that this platform won’t navigate to that direction, because it may not be free for a very long time. Its certainly not sustainable as a business in that form.
For many brands and advertisers, this could be an opportunity to build a user base and benefit greatly from organic advertising techniques to showcase your product and services directly to the your prospective clients and customers. For instance, you may begin by issuing a hashtag challenge directly targeted at your followers to showcase your products. Apart from that, you’ll also be faced with valuable challenges that spark ideas to aid your content and marketing strategies on other platforms.
From the looks of it, TikTok is trending towards a younger clientele when compared with other social media platforms. If you are able to create an appealing video targeted at the demographic on TikTok, there is no doubt that it will remain a valuable marketing tool for brands.
TikTok remains an early phase platform where the really big brands in the market are exploring ways to promote themselves. Make use of this avenue to advertise and promote because even if you just rely on the current nascent marketing infrastructure -primarily organic driven tactics- utilized well within the platform, it could result in returns not possible with the other social platforms on the market.
