You’ve been hearing a bit about TikTok lately. Maybe the kids are using it. Maybe you heard about it on a podcast. Maybe it’s because it’s the first new social media app to make any kind of impact since Snapchat. So, should you bother?
Put basically, TikTok is to video, what Instagram was to photos. And just like Instagram, it was a hit with the kids, way before it was mainstream with the rest of us.
If you recall the old app Vine, before Twitter bought it and shut it down, it’s a little like that. But instead of 6 seconds, you’ve got 15-seconds to wow the world with whatever you’re doing on your video. And you can then string together four videos to form a 60-second video.
TikTok is full of the weird and wonderful… and slightly creepy. If your kids are on it, then you need to monitor it. It’s still new enough that all the censorship and monitoring that we’re used to on Facebook and Instagram still hasn’t made it there. And, this might be a dealbreaker for you, but it’s a Chinese company that owns it. And while it doesn’t mean that your data is necessarily in China, it probably is sent back there at some point.
But what opportunities are there for business on there. Particularly regional business. Is there room for someone in Darwin, Mt Isa, Mackay, Dubbo or even Kununurra, to make a go of carving out their niche on TikTok?
While there’s not yet a self-serve ad platform on TikTok like you have on Facebook or LinkedIn, it’s coming. And when it does, we’ll probably see a lot of advertisers who are marketing to young people move to try it out.
The problem I have with TikTok right now is that it isn’t “sticky.” While it’s hot right now and people are installing it and playing around with it, they’re not staying with it for long. They might play around for a day or two. Buf it they don’t get a result or some kind of following quickly, or they don’t at least find interesting content to follow, they don’t open up app again until someone mentions in the real world that they are on it.
So for me just now, while it’s fun to play with, I would be staying on it to consume content for now, before investing great amounts of time marketing on TikTok. Though, the spoils do tend to go to those who jump on first, so feel free to go for it. Just understand though, that this isn’t Facebook. The big hair and big teeth talking to the camera don’t work here.