Old person's guide to Tik Tok

Get your reading glasses out, here is Fluid’s  “old person's” guide to TikTok 

We sat down with our clever Intern, resident “young person” and digital media translator Cash, for her take on the ins and outs of the internet’s most engaged platform.  

What is TikTok?

The good news is TikTok ads are now available to businesses in New Zealand. The bad news is that the TikTok Community hates ads. Absolutely, HATES ads. They look forced, staged and are generally accepted as being a barrier to the content, users are looking for. In Cash’s words “Ads are soooo easy to spot. I’ll skip them instantly”. Imagine if YouTube had a “skip instant button on every video. Native content is the only way to go if you want to reach this audience.  

Trends are the gas that runs TikTok. 

You know that great joke you heard at a party and then you retell it at another party to get all the lol’s? That's pretty much what TikTok trends are. You almost need to know the originals in order to have the context. It's like a big inside joke that keeps escalating until someone is eating tide pods. Trends can last a few days or a few months. 

The world's most sophisticated algorithm. 

From a technical point of view, TikTok hits the achilles heel of the other platforms. Instagram and Facebook throttle your organic reach, with only about 15% of your viewers seeing your content. Being the evil corporation that they are, they do this so they can charge you to access the rest of your audience or new audiences. TikTok doesn’t do this but the opposite, they spread it around as much as possible. This platform is built to send anything that is even remotely viral to the moon.

So what's the strategy? 

Watch Duo Lingo and Ryan Air to get a masterclass in TikTok. The key is to not care about selling your product and to just care about the content. Great for brand building, not for sales.

Glossary:

VIDEO: "Have you seen TikTok?" 
BLUE TIK: Blue tic’s go to the top of the content section. No one knows how you get a blue tic. Fuck around and find out.
VIRAL: It will be viral when it hits 200,000
STORY TIME: When a random crazy thing happens 
FAVOURITES: Tik Toks can be stored  
COLLECTIONS: Collections are categories within your favourites
SOUNDS: Just like Hip Hop, sounds are sampled and remixed into new video. You can find trends by searching sounds. 

Do: 

• Organic stuff
• Get community buy in 
• Get weird 
• Follow trends but adapt it to your brand 
• Cute, heart warming, informational (life hacks) and funny 

Dont: 

• Run ads 
• Make it obvious 
• Make it about your product 
• Copy the trend, but adapt it to your brand

“The world is doomed anyway. So you might as well give them your data.”