The TikTok Synopsis:
TikTok is a social media video app available on iOS and Android. It has been developed by ByteDance, a Beijing based technology company. TikTok has over 500 million monthly active users and is available in various countries in 33 languages.
In the earlier days of its launch, TikTok was not considered to be a useful app and the video content on it was mostly considered funny. TikTok is now gaining more attention and popularity as the times progress ahead.
Here are some insights on how and why TikTok became a huge platform:
Focus On The Right Audience:
TikTok might seem creepy to many but it has concentrated focus on a whole generation. The Gen- Z and millennial population today makes up the highest number of users on TikTok. The app offers them just what they need. They find a break from the seriousness that follows throughout on other social media platforms like Youtube, Instagram or Twitter. Above all, It offers them a platform that facilitates easy accessibility and freedom to act however they choose to.
Capitalising On The Right Factors:
TikTok got its’ audience research right and found out ‘FOMO’ as a factor that takes a toll on the audience. FOMO is an abbreviation for ‘Fear Of Missing Out’. It apparently refers to the feeling of not being a part of something very interesting.
TikTok made sure for the app to look and sound like there is an interesting party going on. It did so with using the right algorithms and giving options on the app where you could join in with other people and do something fun.
When the potential audience finds out that there are certain people out there involved together in something fun, it triggers them. As a result, they want to join in and end up converting as an active audience member of the app.
Answering Your Audience’s Questions:
TikTok is an app where a user is never lost. The functioning of the app is designed in a way that solves the problem of being clueless. They constantly keep on providing various challenges, themes, participation in what is already tending and other collaborative options.
Therefore, the audience doesn’t have to face questions like What to Watch?, What to Post? What to do? or certainly, what will work here. TikTok assures its users with endless flooding of content.
Personalised Recommendations:
Considering a platform like Instagram, they giving you content by responding to your activities. The algorithms look at your interests, what you usually see, and customise things for you accordingly. The same goes for Youtube. It gathers data from your Google searches and curates recommendations for you. To sum it up, they provide you with things as a response to your activities.
TikTok does this a little differently and works wonders with the ‘For You’ page on the app. Consequently, it has made a great difference to project it as ‘something for you’ and not as ‘a compilation of content from other’s feeds according to what you consume’. It constantly keeps learning from you and builds on what you tend to like. TikTok starts doing that right from the first time you open the app and before you even feed in any data to it.
Enabling Engagement:
TikTok also focuses and capitalises on the need to socialise and engage. A user could be scrolling through their Instagram feed, sitting alone and just looking through what is happening in people’s lives. The same happens on Facebook when you look at pictures of your friends on vacations. It doesn’t give you a feeling of ‘being involved’ in something. Rather, it adds up to one experiencing that they are left out of something.
TikTok changes this experience. They are providing options to join in a group of people involved in a challenge, participate in content trending with certain hashtags or an option to group up with other users and make combined videos with them. So, when you scroll through the feed, you know that you are a part of something that is going on up there.
Statistics To Demonstrate How TikTok Is Winning The Game:
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TikTok exceeds one billion installs for 2019.
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Considering the number of overall downloads, TikTok holds the second place, just right after Facebook as on July 2019.
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TikTok’s parent company spent $1billion for advertising the app in the year 2018.
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TikTok surpassed Uber, being the world’s most valuable start-up, with its’ worth being $75 billion.
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TikTok’s in-app purchases enabled it to earn a revenue of $3.5 million in 2018.
Let’s Take A Look At Some Known Brands And Personalities Who Are Utilising This Platform:
Will Smith:
He announced his presence on TikTok through this video: He announced his presence on TikTok through this video:
ESPN:
Look at their take on this incident, the TikTok way:
Pepsi India:
A challenge ‘swag step’ posed by Pepsi India:
TikTok certainly held up to its methods, and found the right way to do the right things for the right people!
