Hi!
I'm back to talk about one of the biggest topics for marketers at the moment.. TikTok.
I've spent a lot of time researching TikTok over the last few months to understand the capabilities of this app and how brands are using it. I became a Beta tester on TikTok so I can test new features as they are released.
TikTok has been contending for Snapchat's revenue since 2018 but marketers have only really started taking TikTok seriously in the last few months. But is all the hype justified?
Success Stories
First of all let's take a quick look at the app. Brands such as Chipotle, a Mexican restaurant chain in America, have seen huge engagement on this platform. Take a look at one of their most creative videos below, which makes it look as though tortilla chips are singing to an Adele song.. !
Click here to see the video.
This 'free burrito' video is Chipotle's most liked TikTok video to date with 417,000 likes:
Click here to see the video.
UK-based fashion brand popular with 14-24 year olds, Pretty Little Thing boast over 400,000 followers and over 4 million likes. The below video has over 3 million views..
Click here to see the video.
As you can see from these examples, TikTok is a place for more casual and fun videos, less professional than what you might post to Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. Grab your smartphone and shoot some creative videos, making the most of the in-app video editing tools including sounds, filters and transitions.
The most important thing is to determine if TikTok is a good fit for your brand, and not just jump on the bandwagon. Who are your target audience? Tik Tok's audience are predominantly teenagers and young adults who are tech-savvy with a short attention span.
One of the cool kids..
Let's look at the demographics. It was difficult to find any data on the audience metrics but I found this information from a Social Bakers article which gives us an indication of the numbers. Data gathered by App Ape lab in 2018 showed the following stats:
Here we can see that over 66% of users are aged between 10 and 29. Interestingly, TikTok was also popular with 40-49 year olds in 2018 and we can see that older age groups are starting to jump on the TikTok craze. Reports from Marketingcharts show that the number of adults in the U.S. using TikTok has increased from 7.2 million in September 2018 to 14.3 million in March 2019. According to oberlo.com TikTok is now the most downloaded app in the Apple App Store and the third most downloaded app in the Android app store. Between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019 the app gained 188 million new users worldwide growing by 70% (SensorTower, 2019).
The Stats
So how does TikTok compare to other social media networks? While TikTok has taken off since 2018 it still has a lot of catching up to do with other social networks. Ipsos MRBI released social media stats for Ireland in mid 2019.
Let's take a look at the stats for the U.S. Note this graph only includes users aged 18+.
In Ireland 2% of the population are on TikTok, versus 62% on Facebook and 41% on Instagram. In the U.S. 3% of the population are TikTok users, in comparison to 71% who use Facebook and 38% who use Instagram.
If you're interested in getting started with TikTok start off by familiarising yourself with its features. It's not as straightforward as you might think. Take a look at what's trending and scroll through the 'For You Page'. Users include the following hashtags in their posts to feature on the For You Page - #foryoupage or #fyp.
Watch this space for 2020..