Working with young people, I am well informed of the latest trends and social media platforms. And the word on every self-respecting student’s lip? TikTok. At the very heart of it, TikTok is an app where you can share short videos. Think of it as a slightly more impressive version of Snapchat. You can still choose to use filters, stickers and augmented reality, but its niche is multimedia and video rather than photos.
TikTok has had several reincarnations since its humble beginnings. It started life as Musical.ly in 2014, and when it was bought several years later, the buyers merged it with a product they already had and TikTok was born. Since then, the company has grown exponentially and is now worth an estimated 75 billion dollars. Not bad for a few year’s work.
Why is TikTok so popular?
For youngsters, it is the next trendy app to have on your phone, but for influencer marketing, it is a gold mine waiting to be excavated. If you want to get your product or service noticed right now, then you can’t help but look into the possibilities that TikTok have to offer. When an app like this rises in popularity so quickly, influencer marketers need to step in quickly to really reap the benefits.
With the fast-paced business of social media, trends change rapidly. As one app becomes redundant, another app fills that gap almost instantaneously. The result is the younger demographic franticallyflock to the new platform. This is where you will find your fresh new audience. If your product demographic are those under 35, then TikTok is where you should be right now.
What makes it different, and why is it so beneficial for Influencer Marketing?
TikTokuses algorithms from the minute you open the app. So from that very first interaction, it works out what you want to see and shows it to you. It feels like an amalgamation of all its social media predecessors, with hashtags and scrolling, feeds and messages. But somehow, its users see it as something refreshingly new. For influencer marketers, this is a real coup. They’ve explored every social media platform that has gone before, made mistakes when using social media influencers and learnt from those mistakes. Now, they can jump into TikTok and market their products and services in a way which has proven successful.
Moreover, social media influencers who have shown success before will have inevitably taken their followers with them. This is excellent news because now the previous audience is reachable as well as new users.
TikTok is all about short videos, which are far more impressive than the images you might get on other social media platforms. While there are video functions elsewhere, at times these get scrolled through, whereas, with TikTok, it’s expected. TikTok is fun, engaging and above all, smart, which is why it should be where influencer marketers are concentrating their efforts. Until the next hot tip for a newly developed app comes along.
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